All stories
Every story, in one list you can search.
All 252 of them, alphabetical, with the borough or township each one belongs to and how many sources sit under it. Type any word from a title, a place or an opening line.
252 stories
| Story | Place | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| "At no time were the Bricktowners dangerous", 1927Mount Union's nickname was not something the town only called itself. In the winter of 1927 the Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte, eighty miles away… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| 1810 Turnpike RouteDid you know? You can still drive a piece of the 1810s turnpike, and it still has the same potholes people complained about two hundred years… | Huntingdon borough, Alexandria borough | 2 sources |
| 1908 Mount Union Baseball Team1908, a year into the boom, and Mount Union had a baseball team. These young men, many the sons of immigrant families who came for the brick work,… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| 213 Shirley StreetThis was the Harbison-Walker manager's house, at 213 Shirley Street. The federal study of these towns explains what you are looking at without… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| 34th PA Reserves: 209 LostDid you know? Four companies of the 34th Pennsylvania, the 5th Reserves, were recruited partly out of Huntingdon County, and the regiment's war took… | County wide | 1 source |
| A Barrier BrokenDid you know? In 1932 Nancy Slaughter Lee became the first African American student to graduate from Juniata College, and she did it in her own… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| A City that Wasn'tDid you know? A Huntingdon County town was once sold off by lottery, and the lottery is a big part of why it never became the city it was drawn up to… | Birmingham borough, Warriors Mark township | 1 source |
| A County That ReadsThe best free thing on a hot afternoon is the public library. Air conditioning, a summer reading program that keeps kids sharp till September, and a… | County wide | no source list |
| A Face from Naroden GlasGeorgi Vasilev, from the village of Krushoradi in the Lerin district, lived in Mount Union, Pa. This portrait appeared in Naroden Glas, the Bulgarian… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| A Mount Union street, 1907A Mount Union street in 1907, dirt road, board sidewalks, and a town in the middle of an explosion. The brickyards were hiring every hand they could… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| A Question We Cannot Settle, and Maybe You CanThis stone house stands on West Water Street near Division. The federal survey records it as the John Sharrar House and dates it to about 1841. The… | Mount Union borough | 5 sources |
| Aetna Explosion 1916Did you know? The building that killed six men at Mount Union had been catching fire all summer, and the paper reported it as routine local… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| Alexandria High SchoolMain Street at Church Street, Alexandria borough, recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey. The caption below is the survey's: the… | Alexandria borough | 1 source |
| Alexandria Memorial Public LibraryThe federal survey photographed this building at Hartslog and Main Streets in Alexandria borough. The plate below is the survey's own, and the… | Alexandria borough | 1 source |
| An Airplane View of the County SeatA postcard photographer went up over Huntingdon and shot the borough looking west, with the Juniata and its bridges running away below. It was… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Aughwick Rod and Gun ClubBeyond the brick plants and the railroads, there's the Aughwick, the creek that makes this valley livable. The Rod and Gun Club connected people to… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Barree: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Barree township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Barree township | 1 source |
| Barree: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Barree township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Barree township | 1 source |
| Bird's-eye view, 1906Mount Union in 1906, drawn from the air before airplanes, T. M. Fowler's bird's-eye map, made just as the brick boom ignited. Every street, mill,… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Born on the RailsDid you know? Mapleton was named by a railroad company, for trees. The 1966 centennial history puts it plainly: when the Pennsylvania Railroad was… | Mapleton borough | 3 sources |
| Braddock's Harsh ReplyDid you know? In 1755 a Lenape chief asked a British general a direct question, and the answer helped set this whole frontier on fire. Shingas asked… | County wide | 2 sources |
| Brady: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Brady township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and the… | Brady township | 1 source |
| Broad Top StrikeDid you know? By July 11, 1920, about three thousand bituminous coal miners in the Broad Top field were idle. The Associated Press carried it out of… | Broad Top City borough, Carbon township | 4 sources |
| Caldecott Dual ChampDid you know? A two time Caldecott Medal winner was born right here in Huntingdon. Chris Raschka was born in Huntingdon on March 6, 1959. The… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| Cassville's Name EvolutionDid you know? Cassville went by two names at the same time for about fifty years, and the name it finally kept was picked by three men, not by the… | Cassville borough, Cass township | 1 source |
| Clay: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Clay township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Clay township | 1 source |
| Coalmont in the county paper, 1871 to 1874From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Coalmont borough. The Huntingdon Journal did not write essays about Coalmont; it carried a… | Coalmont borough | 3 sources |
| Col. Isaac Rogers Post, OrbisoniaWhen the Civil War veterans of the southern end of the county organised themselves, they did it under the name of a colonel. The Grand Army of the… | Orbisonia borough | 1 source |
| Company Housing (HABS View 2)The HABS team surveyed Mount Union as a company town, where housing was owned by the factory, streets were laid out by the factory, and life… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Company Housing (HABS View 3)The HABS surveyors walked every street of Mount Union's company housing, documenting row houses, duplexes, and family homes, all owned by the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Company Town HousingCompany housing from the HABS survey, the brick companies didn't just employ workers, they housed them. Entire neighborhoods were built and owned by… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Congressman 23 YearsDid you know? Huntingdon sent the same man to Congress for twenty two years, and he never came home from the job. Richard Murray Simpson was born in… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Correspondence from 1906November 22, 1906, Roy Jones sends a postcard to Miss Maud, telling her about hunting rabbits in Mount Union. Fifteen rabbits, a shared meal, and a… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Coulter School, 1897Coulter School on December 29, 1897, Miss Minnie Jones and her pupils gathered for a photograph. This is Mount Union before the brickyards changed… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Creosote River of TiesThe Pennsylvania Railroad's first creosote tie-treating plant stood northeast of Mount Union along the Juniata River, opened just before 1909 when… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Cromwell Township 1836Did you know? Cromwell Township is named for a man who was already dead when they named it, and who had put up the first iron furnace west of the… | Cromwell township, Orbisonia borough | 3 sources |
| Crum Corner ReinventionsOne corner, many lives: an early hotel called the Broad Top House stood here in canal days on the corner of Jefferson Street and Railroad Avenue. The… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Defrehn Chair FactoryIn 1889, William DeFrehn and his sons arrived in Mount Union from Williamsport in Maryland to start a chair factory. A flood had damaged their… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Dickens on the CanalCharles Dickens took a canal boat down the Juniata River in the 1840s, when the waterway was the main road. The canal had replaced the earlier… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Downtown Mount UnionDowntown Mount Union in its prime, grocery stores, furniture dealers, clothiers, theaters, and banks all competing for boom-town money. Every… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Downtown Street (HABS View 2)Street-level perspectives reveal how company towns felt to people who lived in them, the scale of housing, the proximity to neighbors, the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Downtown Street (HABS View)The HABS survey wasn't just housing, it captured downtown streets, commercial blocks, and the public spaces of Mount Union during the brick… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Drake's Ferry Before the BridgesBefore every bridge there was a ferry. Drake's Ferry, which flourished in the early 1800s, was the first recorded crossing on the Juniata at Mount… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Dublin: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Dublin township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and the… | Dublin township | 1 source |
| Dublin: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Dublin township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Dublin township | 1 source |
| Dublin: where the name comes fromFrom the county histories, on Dublin township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Dublin township | 1 source |
| Dudley: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Dudley borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Dudley borough | 1 source |
| East Broad Top in town, 1950An East Broad Top train working Mount Union in 1950. This town was the northern end of the narrow gauge, a big dual-gauge yard and a coal cleaning… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| East Broad Top Locomotive, 1907The East Broad Top locomotive working Mount Union in 1907, a narrow-gauge workhorse hauling coal from the Broad Top mines to the PRR main line. The… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| East Broad Top NO. 12This Baldwin locomotive, built in 1911, worked the East Broad Top for nearly 50 years. When the EBT quit carrying freight and passengers in 1956,… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| First U.S. Coke SmeltingDid you know? There is a furnace site on Big Trough Creek with a real claim on American industrial history. John Savage of Philadelphia leased the… | Todd township | 3 sources |
| Flood Mark on the Planing MillLook at the planing mill in 1936 and you can see exactly how high the water rose, the mark is visible on the building. That line tells the story of… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Flood of '36 Devastated HCDid you know? The flood of 1936 crested over Huntingdon County in the dark, in the small hours of March 18. And on two of our creeks it still did not… | Marklesburg borough, Petersburg borough, Orbisonia borough | 2 sources |
| Floodwaters, 1936The St. Patrick's Day Flood of March 1936 put water where the town stood. Streets became rivers, buildings became obstacles, and the disaster was so… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| G. W. Radle Store, Mount UnionThe G. W. Radle store in Mount Union sold farm supplies. Farm Equipment and Farm Supplies, the signs read in the window glass. A Mail Pouch… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Ganister Hill and the new AmericansA 1922 advertisement for the Stoianoff Brothers of Mount Union, printed in Naroden Glas, the Bulgarian-Macedonian newspaper in America. Families… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Georgi VasilevGeorgi Vasilev, pictured in Naroden Glas, one face among the thousands of Balkan immigrants who came to Mount Union for the brickyards. These… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Governor from a ValleyDid you know? A young man named Martin Grove Brumbaugh, born overlooking the Raystown branch back in 1862 and raised in Woodcock Valley, near the… | Penn township | 1 source |
| Grace United Methodist, Three SpringsThree Springs borough's first photograph here, taken from Pennsylvania Route 994, which is Hudson Street where it runs through the town. The borough… | Three Springs borough | 1 source |
| Greenwood Furnace RailroadsDid you know? Iron made in Huntingdon County left here by wagon and came back as railroad wheels. By the early 1880s Greenwood Furnace was topping… | Jackson township | 1 source |
| Hackman, the Man Who Built Two TownsThis is Clinton V. Hackman, who ran the Harbison-Walker brick plant at Mount Union from 1902 until 1905, when he left for Lock Haven and J. A.… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Happy Independence DayHappy Fourth of July from Historic Mount Union! An American Legion parade rolls through town in the 1940s. This town sent its sons to both World… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Harbison-WalkerThe plant that built Bricktown. The W. H. Haws Company of Johnstown began the Mount Union works in 1899 and sold the whole property to… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Harbison-Walker Plant at Full Steam, 1909We have shared photographs of the Harbison-Walker plant abandoned, silent under the federal survey cameras. This is the plant alive. It is 1909.… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Harbison-Walker Works (HAER View 2)The Harbison-Walker complex sprawled across Mount Union, kilns, molding rooms, storage, rail yards, all connected. One photo can't capture it. The… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Harbison-Walker Works (HAER View 3)The HAER photographers understood that documenting Harbison-Walker meant capturing the whole ecosystem, not just the main plant, but all the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Harbison-Walker Works (HAER View 4)The HAER survey is an archive of industrial architecture before it all fell apart. These photographs preserve what was built, how it worked, and why… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Harry Corbin Post, MapletonMapleton's Civil War veterans organised in December 1880 with twenty-one men. By the time Africa's county history went to press three years later the… | Mapleton borough | 1 source |
| Henderson: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Henderson township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and… | Henderson township | 1 source |
| Henderson: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Henderson township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and… | Henderson township | 1 source |
| Henderson: the village, the store and the post officeFrom the county histories, on Henderson township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and… | Henderson township | 1 source |
| Higgins Fought OnDid you know? Four of the ten companies in the 125th Pennsylvania came out of Huntingdon County. The 125th was raised in July and the first part of… | County wide | 3 sources |
| Hopewell: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Hopewell township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and… | Hopewell township | 1 source |
| Horace PorterDid you know? Horace Porter was born right here in Huntingdon back in 1837. He was a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient, earned it at Chickamauga… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| Horse power, pre-1903Mount Union's fire protection before 1903, when getting to the blaze depended on hooves and volunteer grit. Salute to every firefighter who has… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Huntingdon Built RailcarsDid you know? Huntingdon once built railroad cars, and the best part of the story is that the works had already failed once. In 1872 Orbison and… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Huntingdon County LibraryThe Huntingdon County Library has been a free door for generations. Story hours for the little ones, computers for the job seeker, a warm quiet room… | Huntingdon borough | no source list |
| Huntingdon FurnaceDid you know? The iron works in Franklin Township was not one man's idea. It took three, and each of them brought something different. The county… | Franklin township | 1 source |
| Huntingdon HeroDid you know? A man born right here in Huntingdon, Brigadier General David McMurtrie Gregg, helped hold the Union right at Gettysburg on July 3,… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Huntingdon WreckDid you know? Just before dawn on May 1, 1947, two sixteen foot sheets of steel shifted on an open gondola car of a westbound freight west of… | Huntingdon borough | 3 sources |
| Huntingdon's Grand Courthouse Towers OverDid you know? Huntingdon tore down a courthouse people loved, and fifty five years later they were still sore about it. The county's second… | Huntingdon borough | 4 sources |
| Huntingdon's Grand Courthouse Towers over TownDid you know? The courthouse in Huntingdon exists because a grand jury said the old one was unfit, and the county then took the cheapest bid on the… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| Huntingdon's Steamroller ComposerDid you know? The keyboard player on those Mannheim Steamroller records was born in Huntingdon. Jackson Berkey was born here on May 24, 1942. He… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| Inside the KilnThis is what you faced if you took a kiln job at Harbison-Walker, extreme heat, constant monitoring, days of firing to get the brick right. The work… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| It Was the CountessDid you know? We shared a while back that Huntingdon was named for an English town and not for a countess. A reader sent us back to the books. The… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| Jack's Narrows, 1879Jack's Narrows in 1879, an engraving capturing the dramatic rocks and the river before factories and railroads filled the valley. This is the… | Shirley township | 2 sources |
| JACK'S NARROWS, 1940sJack's Narrows in the 1940s, the same rocks, the same river, the same dramatic landscape that drew people to the valley in the first place. While… | Shirley township | 2 sources |
| Jack's Spring Then and Now 1909In 1909, when Charles H. Welch published his History of Mount Union, the town was already nostalgic. He printed Jack's Spring twice: as it used to… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| July 4th Parade, 1906July 4th, 1906, Mount Union's still-small town comes out for a parade. The brick boom hasn't fully arrived yet, but the traditions are there: bands,… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Juniata Canal 1832Did you know? When Pennsylvania opened the Juniata canal, the boat that did it started from Huntingdon. On November 27, 1832, the packet boat John… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Juniata: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Juniata township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and the… | Juniata township | 1 source |
| Juniata: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Juniata township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Juniata township | 1 source |
| Juniata: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Juniata township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Juniata township | 1 source |
| Kasan and Song, 1909Mount Union in 1909 was more worldly than people imagine. Alley Kasan came to America in 1901 and by 1903 opened a grocery on West Shirley Street. Ye… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Kistler, the Village that Was DesignedMost company towns were laid out by engineers with almost no thought given to how they would feel to live in. Kistler was different. In 1916 the… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| Korean War Remembrance · 76 Years76 years ago today, June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel. Three years of fighting. Over 36,000 Americans never came home.… | County wide | 1 source |
| Late Fall Above MarklesburgRon Shawley photographed the Raystown Lake country in the first week of November 2014 and gave the whole series one caption: Raystown lake Region… | Marklesburg borough | 1 source |
| Leather Before BrickBefore the brick works came the tannery. In 1883, when Mount Union's chief industry was A. D. Faust and Sons, they could process 13,000 hides a year… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Lincoln: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Lincoln township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Lincoln township | 1 source |
| Lincoln: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Lincoln township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Lincoln township | 1 source |
| Locomotive No. 12, north of OrbisoniaA quarter of a mile north of Orbisonia, East Broad Top locomotive No. 12 crosses a steel I-beam plate girder bridge after clearing the yard. The… | Orbisonia borough | 1 source |
| Logan: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Logan township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Logan township | 1 source |
| Lower Spruce Creek PresbyterianSpruce Creek township's first photograph on this site. The valley is best known outside the county for its trout water, which is why a president… | Spruce Creek township | 1 source |
| Market StreetOne of the oldest, most faded views we have of Market Street, from around the turn of the last century. Time and the camera have washed most of it… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Meloni's BarMeloni's Bar, one of the Italian-American family businesses that took root when immigrant workers came to Mount Union for the brickyards and the… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Miller: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Miller township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and the… | Miller township | 1 source |
| Miller: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Miller township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Miller township | 1 source |
| Miller: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Miller township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and the… | Miller township | 1 source |
| Morris: where the name comes fromFrom the county histories, on Morris township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Morris township | 1 source |
| Mount Union's SubwayThis is what a subway looks like in Mount Union. No underground trains here, the subway was the underpass that carried you safely beneath the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Mt. Hope Baptist Church, 1921As the wartime labor market kept expanding, and a third brick plant and a government munitions plant went up, Mount Union drew a number of African… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| National Moon DayFifty seven years ago today, two Americans were standing on the moon. Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder first, about six hours after Eagle set… | County wide | 1 source |
| Native American Civil RightsDid you know? The man who helped bring the first national Native American rights organization into being spent the last fourteen years of his career… | Huntingdon borough | 4 sources |
| New Deal art on our wall, 1936Walk into the Mount Union post office and look up: in 1936, Treasury Department artist Paul Rohland painted this mural of the town as part of the New… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Nine Grades of Coal and a Yard that Never SleptThe East Broad Top yard at Mount Union went in with the line itself, in 1873, and its whole reason for existing was that two railroads of two… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Old Presbyterian Church, 1867 to 1908The brick church in this photograph stood on the southeast corner of Shirley and Division Streets for over forty years. Built in 1866 and 1867 at a… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Oldest PhotoDid you know? One of the oldest surviving photographs taken in the United States was made by a man born in Huntingdon. Joseph Saxton was born here… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| One Storefront, Two TradesThe storefront of J. E. Everett in Mount Union, photographed around 1910. Two people stand in the central doorway, framed between two windows. On the… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Oneida: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Oneida township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Oneida township | 1 source |
| Oneida: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Oneida township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Oneida township | 1 source |
| Orbisonia and Rock Hill from the air, 1906Nobody flew over Orbisonia in 1906. The bird's eye view was a commercial art form: an artist walked the streets, drew every building, and then… | Rockhill borough, Orbisonia borough | 1 source |
| Parade day, 1920sParade day in the 1920s, when a boom town's sidewalks filled shoulder to shoulder for a band and a banner. Some things about a small town never… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Peduzzi's Entrance TileStep into Peduzzi's and look down. The name is set in tile at the doorway, a promise made a century ago that's still visible today. Italian families… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Peduzzi's Soda and LunchPeduzzi's Soda and Lunch, the counter at the heart of downtown for generations of mill shifts, school kids, and Saturday shoppers. Look down at the… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Pennsylvania Avenue, 1945Pennsylvania Avenue in 1945. The east end of town grew up around General Refractories, which built clusters of company housing for its workers, more… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Porter: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Porter township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Porter township | 1 source |
| Porter: the village, the store and the post officeFrom the county histories, on Porter township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and the… | Porter township | 1 source |
| Pulpit RocksDid you know the Pulpit Rocks between Huntingdon and Alexandria are a National Historic Landmark, and that what happened there was an idea? They are… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| Purdue's FounderDid you know? The man Purdue University is named for was born in Huntingdon County, and he had to quit school at twelve. John Purdue was born… | Shirleysburg borough, Cromwell township | 3 sources |
| R. F. Ernst, the Man Behind the CameraFor weeks we have been sharing photographs from Charles H. Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union. Now we want to tell you about the photographer who… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Rail on Canal BedDid you know? The canal through Huntingdon County did not die in a flood. It died quietly, and it was already thirteen years gone when the famous… | County wide | 2 sources |
| Raystown Lake in late autumnTodd township's first photograph here, and the lake is the reason. Raystown is the largest body of water wholly inside Pennsylvania, and its northern… | Todd township | 1 source |
| Raystown Lake's Monster LegendDid you know? The Army Corps of Engineers does not call Raystown Pennsylvania's largest lake. It calls it the largest lake located entirely in… | County wide | 2 sources |
| Robertsdale as it was being built, August 1874From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Wood township. Wood is the youngest township in the county, erected from Carbon in March… | Wood township | 2 sources |
| Rockhill: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Rockhill borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Rockhill borough | 1 source |
| Saints Peter and Paul, Built by the Men Who Came for the BrickThe demand for steel in the First World War pushed silica brick production to a level the county could not staff. Employment at Huntingdon County… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| Salt of the EarthThe people of this county are about as plain and solid as folks come. They work hard, they keep their word, they help a neighbor without being… | County wide | no source list |
| Saltillo: a visitor's account, December 1875From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Saltillo borough. A correspondent of the Huntingdon Journal wrote up a visit to the town,… | Saltillo borough | 1 source |
| Shade Gap 1966Did 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… | Shade Gap borough | 2 sources |
| Shapiro Furniture WarehouseThe Shapiro family built two businesses in Mount Union, a movie house that opened in 1915 and a furniture warehouse that served the town through… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Shirley and Jefferson Corner TodayStand at the corner of Shirley and Jefferson today, and you're standing on the same spot where boom-town Mount Union traded in commerce and news and… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Shirley Street, 1920sShirley Street in the 1920s, the world's silica brick capital in full stride. Three refractories plants running, and a main street to… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Shirley Street, 1930sShirley Street in the 1930s. Even through the Depression, the brick plants kept Mount Union's main street busier than most towns its… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Shirley Street, 1960s, and thank youShirley Street in the 1960s, parking meters, neon, and the last full decade of the brick era. That's 30 days of Mount Union history, one photo at a… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Skating on the JuniataHard to picture in June, but this is what winter looked like in Mount Union. When the Juniata froze hard, the river became the town's gathering… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Small Store in the East EndSelea Cutshall lost both legs to a serious railroad accident. But he built a life anyway. Born in Springfield Township on February 6, 1870, he came… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Smithfield in the county paper, 1872 and 1873From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Smithfield township. Smithfield is one of the newer townships, organized in March 1886 out… | Smithfield township | 3 sources |
| Special delivery, 19101910: the J. D. Flood Company delivers furniture the old way, horse, wagon, and muscle. The town was mid-boom, growing faster than any decade before… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Springfield: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Springfield township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and… | Springfield township | 1 source |
| Springfield: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Springfield township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and… | Springfield township | 1 source |
| Spruce Creek: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on Spruce Creek township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day… | Spruce Creek township | 1 source |
| Spruce Creek: the village, the store and the post officeFrom the county histories, on Spruce Creek township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day… | Spruce Creek township | 1 source |
| St. Patrick's Day Flood, 1936March 17, 1936. The St. Patrick's Day Flood put Mount Union's low streets under water, the most destructive flood ever recorded in the Juniata… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Storage SilosIndustrial storage at the Harbison-Walker complex. These silos held finished brick waiting for the railroad cars that would carry them to the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Strickler's Ice Cream and GasolineStrickler's in the 1950s was where two needs met on the same corner: ice cream and a full tank of gas. The Ice Cream sign is painted large above the… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Strickler's Store and Gas StationStrickler's in the 1950s, full service in every way: pump your gas, fix your car, sell you a cold drink, and maybe a sandwich for the road. By the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| T. A. Giacobello, Foreign SuppliesThe federal survey recorded this storefront on Shirley Street under the name it carried: T. A. Giacobello Foreign Supplies Store. That was what a… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Tea Party PatriotDid you know? One of the men remembered as throwing tea into Boston Harbor is buried in Huntingdon County. Thomas White came over from Ireland and… | County wide | 1 source |
| Tell: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Tell township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Tell township | 1 source |
| Tell: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Tell township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Tell township | 1 source |
| The 1917 Wreck, Buckled WheelsThe wheels buckled and intertwined, metal folded like paper under the force of the collision. This is the physical evidence of the impact that… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The 1917 Wreck, Sleeper Car ViewFebruary 27, 1917, the day everything stopped. The sleeper car of the Mercantile Express lies twisted, and a lone figure stands watching. Inside… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Acme on Shirley StreetThe Acme grocery on Shirley Street, back when clerks fetched your order from behind the counter and most families ran a tab between brickyard… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Arch Bridge over US 522Walk under this stone arch and you're stepping through Italian immigrant craftsmanship, stonemasonry built in the early 1900s when the railroad was… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Bank on the Corner of Jefferson and ShirleyThe county's own history book, published for the sesquicentennial in 1937, lists the banks then operating in Huntingdon County. Two of them were… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The beehive ovensThe beehive ovens of the Mount Union Refractories Company. Two former Harbison-Walker managers struck out on their own in 1911 and built this plant… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Birmingham Bridge, on the county lineThe Birmingham Bridge carries Pennsylvania Route 350 over the Juniata north of Birmingham, and it does not belong to one county. Its far end is in… | Warriors Mark township | 1 source |
| The Boom Decade and a Second SodomMount Union, in numbers: 812 people in 1880. About 1,100 by 1900. More than triple that by 1910. The brick industry came first. The wages followed.… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Brick Office that Became the Red CrossLook at the sign in the yard. This little brick building on Market Street was the General Refractories Company office. When the company closed its… | Mount Union borough | 5 sources |
| The Captain Jack MotelThe Captain Jack Motel in the early 1950s, a new type of lodging for a new era. The brick boom was waning, but Mount Union was adjusting: highways,… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Conveyor that Cost a NeighborhoodFor most of the plant's life the ganister came from the far side of the Juniata and had to be hauled across the river and across the main line. In… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Couple Who Would Not Change Their HouseA Norman Cottage sits gable end to the street, one and a half stories, with one roof slope run out long to cover a side porch and a three window bay… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Creosoting PlantAlongside the brick plants, the Pennsylvania Railroad ran a tie-treating operation, pressure-treating millions of wooden crossties with creosote… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Crum BuildingThe Crum Building on Jefferson Street, one of the brick boom's architectural monuments. Built when money was flowing and the sidewalks were full of… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The darkest day: February 27, 1917February 27, 1917, the deadliest day in Mount Union's history. A coal freight collided with the sleeper car of the Mercantile Express; about twenty… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Dinky BridgeThe Dinky Bridge, not a passenger line, but a workhorse. This little quarry railroad hauled ganister rock down from Jacks Mountain to the brick… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The drug storeThe crew posed out front of the drug store. In a brickyard town, the soda counter was where the day's news got traded after the shift… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The DustThis is the inside of the packing shed at the No. 1 works. Every one of those posts is doing a job, and the floor runs on past the end of the… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| The Engine They Left in the ShedWhen the federal survey team walked the East Broad Top yard, this is part of what they found. A concrete block engine house going soft at the edges,… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Factory that Outgrew the BrickThe factory where the women worked. In 1920, Mount Union Manufacturing opened for men's suits and coats. Within two years, 62 women worked there. The… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The February 27, 1917 WreckFebruary 27, 1917 is the date Mount Union remembers, a coal freight collided with the sleeper car of the Mercantile Express, and in seconds about… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Fire DepartmentThe Mount Union fire department and a crowd of dignitaries on the engine in front of the Municipal Building, 1920. In a tight-packed brick town, the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The First of Its Kind in the CountryIn 1899 the W. H. Haws Company of Johnstown began building a plant at the west end of Shirley Street. The federal engineering survey that documented… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Flood Took the Dinky BridgeThe St. Patrick's Day Flood of March 17-18, 1936 wasn't a passing inconvenience, it was catastrophic. The Dinky Bridge, which had hauled ganister… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Founder's BellDid you know? When Huntingdon's first courthouse went up on Third Street, the man who laid out the town paid for its bell himself. Dr. William Smith… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| The Freight Depot and the People Who Tried to Save ItThe Pennsylvania Railroad put up a new freight depot in Mount Union in 1914, on Pennsylvania Avenue between Depot and Washington streets. It did not… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The G. W. Radle StoreThe G. W. Radle store, one family's answer to the question, "How do you feed a boom town?" With supply lines, trust, and willingness to extend… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Gambrel Roofs on Water StreetThe federal survey describes them exactly as they still stand: two rows of one and a half story, gambrel roofed houses along east Water Street and… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| The General Refractories OfficeThe General Refractories Company office in Mount Union. Harbison-Walker gets the headlines, but it wasn't the only brick empire in town, General… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The H. O. Andrews Feed Mill, MapletonA feed mill is where a farming county turns its own grain back into something its animals can eat, and Mapleton's is on the National Register of… | Mapleton borough | 1 source |
| The Harbison-Walker WorksThe Harbison-Walker Refractories works, the plant that made Mount Union 'Bricktown USA.' Beehive kilns, brick stacks, and acres of works turning… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Houses in Kistler Have NamesNot numbers. Names. They are written on John Nolen's own plan for the town, and the federal survey copied them down: Double Valley Farm House, Double… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Hudson Grist Mill, SaltilloSaltillo's first photograph on this site is of a mill on the National Register of Historic Places. The picture shows the west side, the shed… | Saltillo borough | 1 source |
| The J. E. Everett GroceryThe J. E. Everett grocery in 1910, right in the middle of the decade that changed everything. Between 1900 and 1910, Mount Union's population… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Kenmar HotelThe Kenmar Hotel in 1908. A brick town on the main line drew a steady stream of visitors, salesmen, investors, and railroad men, and they all… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Killing that Named the MountainFebruary 1744. Three Delaware Indians killed an Indian trader named Jack Armstrong and his two companions, James Smith and Woodworth Arnold, at the… | Shirley township | 2 sources |
| The Kistler Company Store, Taken Down in 1990Kistler was about as complete a company town as this region produced. The company built and kept up virtually every building in it, along with the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Lake From Lincoln TownshipRon Shawley photographed the Raystown Lake country in the first week of November 2014 and gave the whole series one caption: Raystown lake Region… | Lincoln township | 1 source |
| The Last Day, and the Molds that Went to UtahAt the end of November 1985 a Harbison-Walker spokesman told the United Steelworkers that the Mount Union plant was closing, because the silica brick… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Legal PadDid you know? Huntingdon once turned out paper tablets by the trainload, and it started with one man selling stationery on Penn Street. In 1869 J.… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| The Lutheran church at CassvilleCassville borough's first photograph here, taken from Seminary Street. The street name is not accidental: Cassville Seminary operated in this small… | Cassville borough | 1 source |
| The Mailbox Made Out of the TownWhen the last of it was over, the town went and got the bricks. A committee collected brick and some of the most elaborate shapes from all three… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| The Methodist church at Mill CreekMill Creek borough's first photograph on this site is of its United Methodist church. The date stone reads MEC 1852, which the photographer takes to… | Mill Creek borough | 1 source |
| The Methodist Church at ShirleysburgThe United Methodist church in Shirleysburg, photographed in July 2016 and released by its photographer into the public domain. The record names the… | Shirleysburg borough | 2 sources |
| The Molding RoomThe molding room at Harbison-Walker, a craft operation hidden inside an industrial giant. Hand-pressed ganister, careful shaping, then off to the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Mount Union TimesThe Mount Union Times, printers and publishers. The town's own paper chronicled the boom, the floods, the wrecks, and a century of everyday life.… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Night the Lights Came OnOn August 20, 1905, the electric lights came on for the first time. Scott Dibert, president of the Mount Union Silica Brick Company, had brought… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| The Nobel PhysicistDid you know? A Juniata College graduate shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. William Daniel Phillips graduated from Juniata in 1970. He went on to… | Huntingdon borough | 2 sources |
| The old high schoolThe old Mount Union High School. Generations of Trojans passed through these doors before… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Packing ShedThe packing shed at the Harbison-Walker works. This is where it all ended up, finished silica brick, crated and loaded onto the Pennsylvania… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Paint RebellionIn the early years at Kistler, the company painted interior walls in bright, deep shades of green, blue, brown, and grey. The residents who lived in… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Pennsylvania Railroad DepotThe PRR depot was Mount Union's front door, dozens of trains a day passing through on the Middle Division, connecting Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Pennsylvania Railroad station, 1908The PRR station in 1908, when the Middle Division main line was Mount Union's front door, dozens of trains a day between Philadelphia and… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Plant Across the RiverThe third brickyard in town was started by two men who used to run the first one. R. P. M. Davis and Clinton V. Hackman, both former managers for… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The Poet at the DepotW. W. Fuller was born at Ickesburg in Perry County on November 6, 1837. He entered the Pennsylvania Railroad's service on March 5, 1865, and by… | Shirley township | 1 source |
| The post office at Shade GapShade 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… | Shade Gap borough | 1 source |
| The Post Office, and What the Painter Put in the MiddleThe date is cut into the front of the building: 1936. That same year the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture sent an artist to… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The Rarest House in KistlerSeven Double Mountain Houses were built in 1917 for workers in Kistler, the company town of Mount Union Refractories across the Juniata River from… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| The Shapiro Theatre, 1941Saturday night, 1941: the Shapiro Theatre. The Shapiro family opened their first movie house in 1915, the same year the powder plant opened and boom… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Sheriff's Office and JailThe county sheriff's office and jail stand inside the Huntingdon Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The… | Huntingdon borough | 1 source |
| The Silica Brick Works CrewThe crew of the Silica Brick Works, this is the human side of industrial statistics. Each face represents a decade or more of work at the kilns, in… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The tie yard, 1950sThe Pennsylvania Railroad tie yard in the 1950s. Mount Union wasn't just brick, millions of wooden crossties passed through the PRR's treating… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The Top and the Bottom of the Same CompanyThis is 118 Market Street, the General Refractories superintendent's house. It is still there. The same company owned forty one houses in Mount… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| The view from Orbisonia depotLooking south across Meadow Street, which is Route 994, from the Orbisonia depot toward the Rockhill shop complex. The East Broad Top was the narrow… | Orbisonia borough | 1 source |
| The Walker Farmstead, south of ShirleysburgOn the west side of U.S. Route 522, three tenths of a mile south of the Shirleysburg borough line, which puts it in Shirley township rather than the… | Shirley township | 1 source |
| The Warriors' MarksDid you know? Nobody is certain how Warriors Mark got its name, and the county history says so in plain words. The 1883 county history opens the… | Warriors Mark township | 2 sources |
| The women of Harbison-Walker, 19451945: with the men overseas, the women of Mount Union kept the brick moving. Silica brick from this plant lined the furnaces of the steel mills that… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| The WPA Built This SchoolKistler Elementary sits at the end of Cedar Street. The federal survey records two things about it that belong together: the brick school in the… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| The wreck at Mill Creek, January 1871From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Mill Creek borough. The Huntingdon Journal of 11 January 1871 carried this item in its… | Mill Creek borough | 1 source |
| Thomas H. Adams, Schoolteacher to BankerAfter teaching school for five years in Franklin and Huntingdon counties, Thomas H. Adams was ready to enter business. His savings were modest but… | Mount Union borough | 1 source |
| Three and a Quarter Million Dollars to Save Twenty Two SecondsIn 1906 the Pennsylvania Railroad replaced its bridge over the Juniata east of Mount Union. The new one runs 668 feet on six stone arches of a… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| Three Springs: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Three Springs borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day… | Three Springs borough | 1 source |
| Three Springs: the first schoolsFrom the county histories, on Three Springs borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day… | Three Springs borough | 1 source |
| Three Springs: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Three Springs borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day… | Three Springs borough | 1 source |
| Traders First, 1754Did you know? The people who came into this valley first were not farmers. They were traders and hunters, here for the fur and deerskin business on a… | County wide | 2 sources |
| Twenty Days to Burn a BrickA green brick holds so much water that it would blow apart in the kiln, so before anything else it had to be dried. Left in the yard that took days… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| Two stone houses in BirminghamBirmingham is the smallest borough in Huntingdon County and one of the oldest, sitting on the Little Juniata where the Pennsylvania Railroad main… | Birmingham borough | 1 source |
| Union: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Union township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and the… | Union township | 1 source |
| Union: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Union township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Union township | 1 source |
| Union: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Union township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and the… | Union township | 1 source |
| Walker: mills, forges and the iron tradeFrom the county histories, on Walker township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1913, including the spelling of the day and the… | Walker township | 1 source |
| Walker: the first settlersFrom the county histories, on Walker township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | Walker township | 1 source |
| Walker: the village, the store and the post officeFrom the county histories, on Walker township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1876, including the spelling of the day and the… | Walker township | 1 source |
| Warrior Ridge DamThe dam spans the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River at Petersburg. The engineering record photographed it from downstream, looking southwest… | Petersburg borough | 1 source |
| Washington Street at Second, DudleyHouses and the Methodist church on the north side of Washington Street where it meets Second, photographed in March 2015. Dudley is a small borough… | Dudley borough | 2 sources |
| Welcome to Historic Mount UnionWelcome to Historic Mount Union! We start from the air: Bricktown USA before 1960. At its peak the town ran three refractory plants at once:… | Mount Union borough | 3 sources |
| West: getting there: roads, rails and the riverFrom the county histories, on West township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the… | West township | 1 source |
| What the Company Called This Place in 1917In a 1917 advertisement, Harbison-Walker called itself the largest manufacturer of refractory materials in the world, and called its Mount Union… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
| When the Government Came to ListenIn 1989 and 1991, federal historians came to town to record the people who remembered the brickyards. They recorded Fred S. Beatty, Josh Booker,… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| When the Presses Replaced the HandsThe machines that built the secret. In 1942, when Robert Wagner came to work at Harbison-Walker's Mount Union plant, hand molding accounted for 90… | Mount Union borough | no source list |
| Who Named Mount UnionWho named Mount Union, and when? The town's own histories can't quite agree. Welch's 1909 book says Col. William Pollock gave the name, in… | Mount Union borough | 4 sources |
| Why the Thousand Steps Are ThereThousands of people climb the Thousand Steps every year. Far fewer know they were somebody's job. The federal engineering survey has the answer, and… | Mount Union borough | 2 sources |
42 of these carry no source
list. They are shown as written and say so on their own page. The rest carry
the works they were checked against, and the sources page explains how.