Terrace Mountain on a Philadelphia stereo card, 1873

In September 1873 a Philadelphia stereo card publisher, James Cremer, put Terrace Mountain near Huntingdon on a nine by eighteen centimeter mount and numbered it 234. The Library of Congress record dates the card to that month, names Cremer (1821 to 1893) as both photographer and publisher, and indexes it under the subject headings mountain railroads and railroad tracks, which is as much as the record says about what is in the frame. Beyond the "near Huntingdon" of the title, its place field goes no finer than Huntingdon County, and it does not say which railroad the view shows. The card came to the library in the Marian S. Carson Collection, and the library lists no known restrictions on publication.

The mountain itself is well described in the books that cover the county. White's 1885 geological report says Terrace Mountain and Sideling Hill are the only mountains of their kind in Huntingdon County, a crest of gray Pocono sandstone above a terrace made by the hard red sandstone beds of the Catskill formation, and that this terrace is what gives the mountain its name. White wrote that the two ridges unite in a high point at the Juniata below Huntingdon and that Terrace Mountain then runs southwestward and southward past the west side of Broad Top into Bedford County. He reported that no exact measurement of its height had been made.

White also explained the crooked river at its foot. The Raystown Branch, he wrote, flows along the base of Terrace Mountain through a belt of soft Catskill rock, crossing from side to side and rebounding between ridges of Chemung sandstone on the left and the solid Pocono sandstone of Terrace Mountain on the right, so that 21 miles of air-line distance from the Bedford County line to the Juniata become nearly 50 miles of stream bed. He added that Trough Creek leaves the trough between Sideling Hill and Terrace Mountain through a gap in Terrace Mountain to reach the Raystown Branch. The 1883 county history says Trough Creek rises in Terrace Mountain, and that Forshey's Gap in the mountain took its name from the family of Solomon Forshey of Penn Township.

Cremer's label, pasted on the back of the card, advertised his shop at 18 South Eighth Street.

From James Cremer's Stereoscopic Emporium, 18 South Eighth St., Philad'a. Photo-miniatures in every style. Family groups taken for the stereoscope.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Terrace Mountain near Huntingdon, written data pages, Library of Congress item 2017660277, photographer's label pasted on verso · character 609 of the scanned text

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

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