Settled along the Juniata River in the shadow of Jacks Mountain, Mount Union grew from a river crossing and a canal-era settlement into an industrial powerhouse — then into the close-knit community it is today. Much of what follows below the 1849 founding comes from Charles Howard Welch's History of Mount Union, Shirleysburg and Shirley Township (1909-1910), the single richest historical source on the town, generously shared with this project in 2026.
Cumberland County is formed, taking in the future Huntingdon County area; the region passes to Bedford County in 1771 and finally to newly formed Huntingdon County in 1787 (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 3–5).
Fort Shirley is built near present-day Shirleysburg during the French and Indian War, named for General William Shirley (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 8).
Samuel Drake, Sr. establishes Drake's Ferry at the east end of Jacks Narrows — for decades the only Juniata River crossing on the road west toward Chambersburg, Hagerstown, and Baltimore (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 113).
The Pennsylvania Canal is built through the valley — 193 miles and 71 locks in all — bringing the first real wave of commerce and settlement to the future townsite (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 129–130).
John Sharrar builds a stone house on Water Street — called the oldest house in Mount Union proper — while Col. William Pollock surveys the plot that becomes the town's nucleus (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 126–127).
James Kelley and Dr. William Brewster build the “Old Warehouse” and an adjoining tavern at the east end of town — briefly naming the spot “Santa Fe” before the Mount Union name took hold (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 127–128).
Welch records that Mount Union was “laid out by Dougherty and Speer” this year (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 160) — the town's founding date, though Water Street had already begun settling somewhat earlier around the canal.
The first Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive passes through Mount Union on June 6; regular Huntingdon–Philadelphia rail service begins the very next day (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 214).
Mount Union is incorporated as a borough: the court grants the charter petition on April 19, orders the first borough election for May 6, and the decree is recorded June 6. George McLaughlin is elected the borough's first Burgess (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 163–164) — independently confirmed, with matching dates, by J. Simpson Africa's 1883 History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties (pp. 353–361), which also preserves the full list of charter petitioners and early Council. See the new section below.
Construction begins on the East Broad Top Railroad (Sept. 16, 1872); the narrow-gauge line opens from Mount Union to Orbisonia on August 30, 1873, eventually reaching Robertsdale to serve the Broad Top coal region (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 242).
Discovery and development of ganister rock deposits on nearby Jacks Mountain launches the silica brick (refractory) industry — the Mount Union Silica Brick Co. makes its first brick on November 27, 1901 (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 383). The population nearly triples in a single decade — from 1,086 residents in 1900 (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 396) to 3,338 by 1910 — as workers and families pour in. See Bricktown USA for the full industrial story.
Mount Union Light & Power Co. switches on the town's first electric current on August 20 — Welch calls it “a night long to be remembered by our citizens” (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 389).
A new $30,000 Pennsylvania Railroad station opens December 15, part of a 10-mile track realignment that eliminated two dangerous curves through town (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 217, 220–221).
The borough is divided into three wards, split along the old Pennsylvania Railroad line and Jefferson Street (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 746). By this point industrial and railroad payrolls in town totaled roughly $45,000 a month (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 743).
The Pennsylvania Railroad builds a viaduct through town, bypassing the original grade for express trains and eliminating dangerous street crossings; the new “high line” runs partly over the old, by-then-abandoned canal bed (Mount Union Historic District, NRHP nomination, 1994). A closed-spandrel arch bridge of six 100-foot spans, carrying the line over the Juniata River and what's now Route 522, was built as part of this 1906 project and still stands today, now on Norfolk Southern (Jeff Britton, “Middle Division Main Line 279,” pennsyrr.com).
The refractory industry consolidates into the three plants that would define “Bricktown”: Mount Union Refractories Co. is organized 1911-12 (later U.S. Refractories, 1922, then North American Refractories, 1930), while General Refractories Co. purchases the Mount Union Silica Brick Co. in 1915, eventually operating 41 company houses for its workforce, including the roughly 100-house Ganister Hill community (Mount Union Historic District, NRHP nomination, 1994). See Bricktown USA.
World War I brings a wave of eastern and southern European immigrant workers and African American workers (many drawn by the Etna Explosives Co.'s wartime munitions plant) into what had been a largely homogeneous Protestant town. Population tops 6,000 by 1920 — among the fastest-growing small towns in the state (Mount Union Historic District, NRHP nomination, 1994; this source dates the town's 1,086-population baseline to 1906, a few years later than Welch's own 1900 count of the same figure above — a small, unreconciled discrepancy between the two sources rather than a corrected date). Housing patterns of the era concentrated many Black residents in a low-lying section north of the new viaduct known as “The Flat,” which would later flood badly in both 1936 and 1972.
On February 27, a stalled Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train is struck from the rear by a fast freight at Mount Union, telescoping the all-steel sleeping car Bellwood and killing twenty people — one of the deadliest rail disasters to strike the region.
After the St. Patrick's Day Flood destroys the mine-cart bridge to the quarries, out-of-work quarrymen are put to building the now-famous Thousand Steps up Jacks Mountain, rather than being laid off.
Artist Paul Rohland, under a U.S. Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts commission, completes Union of Mountains — a mural for the new Mount Union Post Office depicting Jacks Narrows, the then-new bridge, and the brickyards. The Mount Union Times made a fuss over the new post office building itself, but never once mentioned Rohland or his mural. It still hangs there today — and its likeness is now the background of this site's home page.
At its height, Mount Union is home to three major refractory plants and becomes known as the world's largest producer of silica brick, earning the town its enduring nickname: Bricktown USA. A snapshot of just how much freight that meant: in 1947 alone, the Pennsylvania Railroad's own industrial directory recorded 2,797 rail cars in and out of Harbison-Walker, 1,724 for North American Refractories, and 992 for General Refractories Co. (Jeff Britton, “Middle Division Main Line 279,” pennsyrr.com, citing the 1925 & later PRR Industrial Directory).
The East Broad Top Railroad, the narrow-gauge line that helped move coal, brick, and goods through the valley, ends regular operations in the area.
Sections of the East Broad Top are preserved and reopened for steam excursion trips south of town, running historic locomotives like No. 12 — seen in this archive's Gallery working the wye near Shirleysburg — long after the line's common-carrier freight days ended.
The Mount Union Refractories Company complex and the broader Mount Union Historic District — encompassing dozens of homes, churches, and commercial buildings from the 1800s through the 1930s — are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Around 2,300 residents call Mount Union home. The brick plants are gone, but the identity they forged remains — carried on by the Historical Society, the Bricktown Museum, and families whose roots run generations deep.
Welch credits pioneer resident Col. William Pollock with naming the town — for the “union of mountains” the Juniata River cuts through at Jacks Narrows (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 2, 124). But Welch also reports, citing historian Hon. Simpson Africa, that “good authority” instead credits John Dougherty with the name (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 124). Welch never resolves which account is right, and neither do we — it's presented here as the unresolved historical dispute it is, not a settled fact. A wrinkle found in 2026: Africa's own 1883 History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties — the very source Welch cites for the Dougherty theory — itself credits Pollock, as the vicinity's pioneer postmaster, with choosing the name for a post office, “in consequence of such a number of mountains coming together at or near this place” (Africa 1883, PDF scan p. 429, printed p. 354). Africa gives no date for this naming, and doesn't explicitly confirm that this postmaster Pollock is the same “William Pollock” who surveyed the original 1840 town plot (Africa 1883, PDF scan p. 428) — so even this account has its own internal gap. Whether Welch was drawing on a different passage of Africa's book, or simply mischaracterized his source, isn't something we can resolve from what's been found so far — so the dispute stands, now with an extra layer.
Welch's book repeats the local tradition that Jack's Mountain and Jack's Narrows are named for a frontiersman, “Captain Jack” Armstrong, whose family was killed by Indians in 1752 (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 9–11) — then immediately flags his own sources as contradictory and the man's true identity as unresolved: “who Capt. Jack really was, will probably never be known” (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 11). A later, more thorough investigation of this same legend is one of this site's most-read features — read the full story on Town Lore.
J. Simpson Africa's 1883 History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties preserves the names behind the 1867 incorporation — the petitioners who asked the court for a charter, and the borough's first elected government.
David Etnier, Peter H. Campbell, John Dougherty, Jacob Flasher, Catharine Dougherty, J.K. Thompson, John Shaver, S.B. Shaver, James J. Robinson, C.B. McCarstry, John Shaver (a second, possibly duplicate “John Shaver” entry appears in Africa's own list), Bell Shaver, James Mackey (M.D.), Samuel Diffendaffer, A. Eberman, F.H. Harrison, Alfred Simons, P.M. Bare, John Bare, May Simons, H.P. McLaughlin, John J. Myers, Lewis R. Morgan, George P. Miller, Henry Laher, George McLaughlin, James B. Harris, Catharine Stewart, John G. Stewart, B.J. Devor, F.D. Stevens, A. Harshberger, and J.A. Speer.
Africa 1883, PDF scan p. 428. Several names carry OCR uncertainty in the original scan.
Burgess: George McLaughlin. Council: J.C. Sechler, J.G. Stewart, Samuel Diffendafer, Adam Harshberger, B.J. Devor. At the Council's first meeting (June 10, 1867, at B.J. Devor's office), Devor was elected secretary, John G. Stewart collector/treasurer, and Samuel Miller street commissioner; a tax of five mills on the dollar was laid. Chief Burgesses through 1882 followed as: Augustus Eberman (1868), Thomas H. Adams (1869), G.W. Thompson, M.D. (1870), John Lukens (1871), John Bare (1872), J.H. Miller (1873, name uncertain in the original scan), J.J. Robinson (1874-75), Lewis R. Morgan (1876-77), John G. Stewart (1878), W.W. Fuller (1879), R.J. Faust (1880-81), and W.G. Ewing (1882).
Africa 1883, PDF scan pp. 429, 445.
Welch's book also profiled the town's working businesses street by street. A few of the more distinctive ones, exactly as he found them:
Founded May 26, 1875 on Shirley Street, growing from a small storefront into a three-story brick landmark — one of the largest general stores in town by 1909 (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 398).
Abe Strauss and Charles Wiler (clothiers, both from the Kovno region of the Russian Empire), George Shapiro (clothier, born in Kovno), Abe Diamond (a 5-and-10-cent store, fled Russia to escape conscription), Alley Kasan (a grocer “from the region of the Lebanons,” near Beirut), and Ye Hing Song (a Chinese laundry at Pennsylvania Ave. and Jefferson St.) all ran storefronts in Mount Union by 1909 (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 404–513).
A Shirley Street nickelodeon, an early window into small-town movie exhibition decades before television (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 443–445).
A new suburb laid out and named by Allen S. Welch (the author's father) on the former George P. Miller farm; by 1909 it had about 25 homes, a grocery, and a school. Welch predicted “Allenport has a brilliant future” (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 550–554).
About 200 acres between the new rail line and the Juniata River, home to a PRR creosoting plant and a tie yard “containing room for a million ties” (Welch 1909-1910, printed pp. 555–556).
Two more early-1900s subdivisions — Jefferson Heights on the old Pollock farm to the west, Cedarcrest across the river “at the foot of the mountain” (Welch 1909-1910, printed p. 557).