Carbon township

Carbon Township Named For Its Coal

Did you know? Carbon Township was erected on April 23, 1858, and took its name from the coal within its borders. Its ground was taken from Todd Township, which bounded it on the north.

The name told what lay under the ground. Lytle's 1876 county history placed the township principally upon Broad Top Mountain and said it contained a considerable portion of the Broad Top coal field. Two railroads ended there, the Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain entering from the northwest and the East Broad Top from the northeast, and Lytle wrote that the only industry was the mining of semi-bituminous coal, with such mercantile and mechanical business as the miners needed. Jordan's 1913 history still called coal mining the leading occupation of the inhabitants.

The township was split in 1905. On March 6 of that year the court ordered the eastern half erected as the new township of Wood, with the line running a short distance east of Broad Top City.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-30 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a verbatim passage and a script confirmed each passage is in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

Sources

J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (1883)
Milton Scott Lytle, History of Huntingdon County (1876)
John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People, vol. 1 (1913)

Checked 2026-10-30 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

← All stories from Carbon township

Have something to add to this story, or a photograph of it? Send it here →