Huntingdon County Information Page

Borough · Huntingdon County

Shade Gap

2 stories on file, each with its sources. 0.0 square miles of land in the ridge and valley country of central Pennsylvania.

78
Population
2020 Census, P.L. 94-171
0.03 sq mi
Land area
2020 Census gazetteer
1,007 ft
Elevation
Community reference point, checked against USGS
Borough
Type
GEOID 4206169456

The founding record

Shade Gap was incorporated as a borough on April 20, 1871, but the early records have been lost. In 1910 the population was 143, Shirleysburg, formerly known as Aughwick, Old Town and Fort Shirley, was settled by George Croghan prior to the French and Indian war. The town was laid out by Henry Warner and in its early days was the most important place in the county southeast of Huntingdon. Saw and grist mills were built at an early date. Every spring for many years the militia from the southeastern townships met at Shirleysburg for review and inspection. A factory for the manufacture of earthenware was established in 1866 by George W. Hawker, who also made drain tile and terra cotta. Dr. Loughran was the first physician, Shirleysburg was incorporated as a borough on April 3, 1837, with John Lutz as the first chief burgess. The completion of the East Broad Top railroad through the place in 1873 gave a new impetus to business and for a time the population showed considerable increase. Rival towns then offered better inducements for the investment of capital and for the last half a century Shirleysburg has barely held its own. In 1910 the population was 256, a slight decrease under that of 1900. Three Springs, a station on the East Broad Top railroad in the southern part of the county, was laid out in the spring of 1843 and was first called Scottsville, for General Winfield Scott. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 234,889 of the scanned text

Quoted from a work published before 1929 and therefore in the public domain in the United States. Spelling and punctuation are as printed, including nineteenth century spellings of place names. Scanned text carries optical character recognition errors; the character offset is given so the passage can be found and checked in the original.

2 stories

Stories from Shade Gap

Did you know? On May 11, 1966, 17-year-old Peggy Ann Bradnick was kidnapped from Shade Gap by William Diller Hollenbaugh. For seven days, federal agents and state police conducted the largest FBI manhunt in U.S. history at that time. Peggy Ann was rescued on May 18 when State Trooper Grant H. Mixell confronted Hollenbaugh at a farm in nearby Burnt Cabins. The ordeal made national headlines, but it's a story many Huntingdon County residents have never heard.

What the fact check changed. Every specific checks out: date May 11 1966, age 17, abductor William Diller Hollenbaugh, seven days captive, rescue May 18 at a farm in Burnt Cabins (the Rubeck farm), and State Trooper Grant H. Mixell as the man who fired the fatal shot. One wording nit: the post says 'largest FBI manhunt in U.S. history at that time'; the underlying source says largest manhunt in United States history up to that time, involving ov…

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The post office in Shade Gap, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania
The post office in Shade Gap, Huntingdon County, PennsylvaniaWhite Feather Safari Inspecting, via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. CC BY 2.0

Shade Gap sits where the road goes through Shade Mountain, and a gap in a ridge is why most small towns in this county are where they are. This is the borough's first photograph on the site: its post office, in 2009.

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Where it sits

Alexandria borough: 3 storiesBirmingham borough: 2 storiesBroad Top City borough: 2 storiesCassville borough: 2 storiesCoalmont borough: 2 storiesDudley borough: 2 storiesHuntingdon borough: 22 storiesMapleton borough: 3 storiesMarklesburg borough: 2 storiesMill Creek borough: 2 storiesMount Union borough: 131 storiesOrbisonia borough: 6 storiesPetersburg borough: 2 storiesRockhill borough: 2 storiesSaltillo borough: 2 storiesShade Gap borough: 2 storiesShirleysburg borough: 2 storiesThree Springs borough: 4 storiesBarree township: 3 storiesBrady township: 2 storiesCarbon township: 2 storiesCass township: 2 storiesClay township: 2 storiesCromwell township: 3 storiesDublin township: 4 storiesFranklin township: 2 storiesHenderson township: 4 storiesHopewell township: 2 storiesJackson township: 2 storiesJuniata township: 4 storiesLincoln township: 3 storiesLogan township: 2 storiesMiller township: 4 storiesMorris township: 2 storiesOneida township: 3 storiesPenn township: 2 storiesPorter township: 3 storiesShirley township: 5 storiesSmithfield township: 2 storiesSpringfield township: 3 storiesSpruce Creek township: 3 storiesTell township: 3 storiesTodd township: 2 storiesUnion township: 4 storiesWalker township: 4 storiesWarriors Mark township: 3 storiesWest township: 2 storiesWood township: 2 storiesHuntingdonMount UnionOrbisoniaThree SpringsPetersburgMapletonAlexandriaRockhillBroad Top CitySaltillo
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