Smithfield

Did you know? The stretch of Route 22 that runs past Huntingdon today was built in the late 1940s.

Federal bridge records date its bridges to 1948 and 1949: the bridge over Crooked Creek at Smithfield to 1948, and the bridge over Penn Street, the railroad and the Juniata River to 1949. A state highway history says construction began in 1949 on the new line from Route 26 to Penn Street south of Huntingdon, and the Huntingdon Daily News has its own negatives of the bypass being built, from about 1947.

Myer Souders sent us this photograph of the cut. He tells us it looks west toward Smithfield and Huntingdon, that the bypass went from start to finish between 1947 and 1949, and that the old highway ran on the south side of the railroad, next to the river, until it reached the farm by Numer's Hollow. And look at that house below the cut, just sitting there watching it all happen.

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From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Smithfield township. Smithfield is one of the newer townships, organized in March 1886 out of Porter, Walker and Juniata, so the papers of the 1870s do not name it. They do name the village of Smithfield, which sits across the Juniata from Huntingdon borough and which the township was later formed around. One of the items below calls it "near this place", and the paper was printed in Huntingdon, which is how we know it is this Smithfield and not the one in Fayette county or the street in Pittsburgh. Three items are printed below, each with the date it appeared, exactly as the page reads.

14 February 1872. "A young man named Westbrook, a resident of Smithfield, near this place, and an employee on the Penn'a. Railroad, was seriously injured , on Friday last, by three cars passing over him. The accident happened above Spruce Creek, but we have been unable to get any particu lars. The young man is in a critical condition." — 21 February 1872. "Joshua Hicks, of Smithfield, an aged gentle. man, stepped upon some ice, covered with snow, while out walking, on last Sunday after noon, fell and broke his left limb. Dr. Brum baugh was called in immediately and admin istered to the wants of the patient." — 30 April 1873. "The Board walk through Smithfield has gone into decline."Huntingdon Journal, 14 and 21 February 1872 and 30 April 1873, all p. 3 · character 0 of the scanned text

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Did you know? The Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad's report for 1857 records that turntables had been put in at Huntingdon and at Hopewell, along with the water stations needed on the route.

Myer Souders has a photograph of an H&BTM engine on the turntable which, he tells us, was taken at Smithfield between 1947 and 1949, looking northeast, with the Route 22 bridge over Fairground Road under construction.

The railroad did not run much longer. The Huntingdon and Broad Top closed in 1954, and a National Register study of the county's industries ties the closing directly to the decline of the coal industry.

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Did you know? The state Department of Corrections calls SCI Huntingdon Pennsylvania's oldest correctional institution in continuous operation.

It was created by an act of the General Assembly on June 12, 1878. The original tract along the Juniata River, 39 acres with several springs, cost $22,036. In 1889 the Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon received its first inmates, people deemed too young for a penitentiary and too old for a juvenile facility. It was renamed in 1945, and in 1960 it became a maximum security, adult male state correctional institution.

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The welcome sign for Huntingdon, photographed in June 2025. It is worth knowing where it actually stands: the sign greets drivers on the way into the county seat, and the ground it is planted in is Smithfield township, which wraps around the borough.

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