Going east from Kersey, road leads through “The Barrens,” a sandy rocky stretch of land denuded of vegetation by forest fires, on the old Bellefonte Pike. Scenery is wonderful toward Mount Zion, where there is a typical country church and burial ground. At Mount Zion corner, the road takes three courses; left leads to Byrnedale with its fifty coke ovens, coal tipples, and washer plant. Wilcox, in northern part of county, lying in the famous gas belt of Elk County, has large glass factory. A few miles back is Tambine; near here President Grant, guest of General Thomas Kane, spent a day fishing for trout. From Wilcox, along the Big Level Road, is Rasselas; here Captain (later General) Kane pinned a buck’s tail on the hat of Hiram Woodruff, first member recruited for the Bucktail Regiment. On the old Milesburg and Clermont Pike, William C. Walsh carried the first mail through this section in 1828.
Blair County
LIX
BLAIR COUNTY
FORMED February 26, 1846; named for Honorable John Blair, native of this county, and public-spirited citizen; in 1820, he laid out, and was President of the Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike, first in this section. Blair County lies in the beautiful Juniata Valley, settled by Scotch-Irish, English, and Germans; much of the soil is very fertile. Chief industries, agriculture, coal mining, and manufacturing. It is the center of a network of roads, mostly built as turnpikes from 1830-50; now state roads.
Tyrone, altitude 692 feet above sea level, population 9084; outlet for important bituminous coal products; lies in a basin formed by the base line of old Tussey, a famous mountain, and the bold ridge known as Bald Eagle. The home of Captain John Logan, eldest son of Shikellamy, was at mouth of Bald Eagle Creek; second son, James Logan, the Mingo chief, named for Secretary Logan of Germantown, went west to the Ohio; his son (Tod-kahdohs) married a daughter of Chief Cornplanter. About three miles east from Tyrone is the Sinking Valley, named from the Sinking Creek, an underground watercourse; near is Birmingham, with a pleasure ground, where there are one hundred springs and a large cave; a school for girls is here.
Altoona, population 60,331; altitude 1171 feet above sea level; founded by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1850, consists almost entirely of their shops and workmen’s houses. St. Luke’s Protestant Episcopal Church, native stone, first built in 1858; second building in 1881, using the same stone; Gothic, F. C. Withers, New York, architect; has an English window, also one by Tiffany, “The Resurrection,” exhibited in Paris in 1900; memorial to Almet E. Read, Esq.; brick rectory and school, gift of General John Watts De Peyster, as memorial to his daughter, first school for advanced education in Altoona.
In the Logan House, built, 1854, by the Pennsylvania Railroad, was held the conference of the loyal war governors in 1862, namely, A. G. Curtin, Pennsylvania; John A. Andrew, Massachusetts; Richard Yates, Illinois; Israel Washburn, Jr., Maine; Edward Solomon, Wisconsin; Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa; O. P. Morton (by D. G. Ross, his representative), Indiana; William Sprague, Rhode Island; F. H. Pierpont, Virginia; David Tod, Ohio; N. S. Berry, New Hampshire; Austin Blair, Michigan; to devise ways and means for coöperating with President Lincoln in suppressing the Rebellion. King Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, stopped here. On the William Penn Highway, formerly an old portage road, is site of an early historic hotel, “Fountain Inn,” mentioned by Dickens in “American Notes”; here William Henry Harrison stopped overnight on his way to Washington in 1841, to be inaugurated President of the United States; Henry Clay and Jenny Lind also stopped here.
Near junction of Sugar Run with Burgoon’s Run, three miles south of Altoona, in 1781, Indians killed a number of militiamen from Fetter’s Fort, built in 1775, by firing on them from ambush. A monument dedicated in 1909, marks the place where the wife of Matthew Dean and three of their children were killed by Indians in 1788, while he and the other children were working in the fields. In Blair County are also sites of Fort Roberdeau, built, 1778, and Fort Lowry, 1779, unmarked. Magnificent views from Nopsononock, at summit of the Alleghenies, Prospect Hill, and Kittanning Point, where the Pennsylvania Railroad is carried around the famous Horseshoe Curve. A little farther, the Pennsylvania Railroad passes through a tunnel two-thirds of a mile long, 2160 feet above sea level.