Mapleton Station, the depot that made a town

A stereo card in the Library of Congress carries the words American Views. Pennsylvania R. R. on its mount, the number 219, and the title Mapleton Station. The library dates it only to between 1860 and 1890 and names no photographer. It is an albumen print from the Marian S. Carson Collection, with no known restrictions on publication.

The 1883 county history says the station came before the town. In 1851 the land was owned by M. F. Campbell and John Donaldson and had not begun to take on the character of a village. When the Pennsylvania Railroad was completed a station was established here, and that station, the history says, was the nucleus of the future village. As late as 1858 there were no more than three houses, those of George Beatty, Robert McCarl and George King. The shipping of bark, timber and sand from this point drove rapid growth between 1860 and 1866, when the population reached three hundred. A borough charter followed in August 1866, taking in about a quarter of a square mile on the southern shore of the Juniata where Scrub Run and Hare's Valley Creek enter the river. The population was 389 in 1870 and 444 at the 1880 census. The post office, the history notes, was established at an early day under the name Mapleton Depot, and Jordan's 1913 history still gives Mapleton Depot as the post office name, with a population of 752 in 1910.

Lytle's 1876 history describes glass sand being quarried and crushed on the opposite side of the river from the town, and Jordan records two sand quarries opened near it in 1876. The 1966 centennial booklet says a large passenger station and a freight station were built on the south side of the tracks in the center of town, with a passenger waiting room on the north side, and that by 1966 all of them had been torn down except the track foreman's house. The booklet also says the railroad sold its locomotive water reservoir to the borough in 1932 for fifty dollars.

American Views. Pennsylvania R. R.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Mapleton Station, written data pages, Library of Congress item 2017660278, note on mount · character 449 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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