Huntingdon borough, Mount Union borough

The Cars Reach Mount Union, 1850

By late March 1850 the railroad’s cars were running to Shaver’s Aqueduct, eleven miles east of Huntingdon. The Huntingdon Journal reported that they brought passengers to that point each day in numbers sufficient to crowd two packet boats, and that the fare was three cents a mile. Milton S. Lytle’s 1876 county history places the aqueduct at the lower end of the present site of Mount Union.

From the aqueduct the track went on to Huntingdon. The Journal had announced on June 4 that the cars would begin running regularly “on Monday next,” and the Lewistown Gazette of June 7 said the road would be opened to Huntingdon on the 10th of June. The regular trips began a few days sooner than the papers had said. On Thursday, June 6, 1850, the first locomotive reached Huntingdon, and on Friday, June 7, the passenger trains began their regular runs. The Journal told its readers on June 11 that the first locomotive “arrived here on Thursday last” and that its arrival “created quite a sensation.” The Gazette of June 14 said the passenger trains “ran through to Huntingdon on Friday evening last.”

Lytle’s 1876 history says the first train at Huntingdon was five or six trucks drawn by the locomotive “Henry Clay.” It was a trial trip, running so slowly that people had time to reach the railroad and see it, and a few days later it went on west. Lytle wrote that its shrill whistles “even surprised the mountains,” but people had come to think trains never ran slower than lightning, so seeing this one come along at three or four miles an hour was a disappointment. He thought the excitement with which it was greeted “probably exceeded” the excitement at the arrival of the first canal boat. Jones’s 1856 history of the Juniata Valley takes a different view. It says the finished railroad “failed to create the surprise and enthusiasm excited by the canal,” though it did open up the valley and its vast resources.

Welch’s 1909 history of Mount Union says the first locomotive arrived on Thursday, June 6, “thus passing through Mount Union.” J. Simpson Africa’s 1883 county history gives the same day and says regular trains ran from Huntingdon to Philadelphia the next day. Africa also says the Pennsylvania Central Railroad was built to Mount Union in 1850.

On June 18 the Journal reported that the whole trip from Philadelphia to Cincinnati could now be made in three days and six hours, by railroad to Pittsburgh, by steamboat from there to Wheeling, and on to Cincinnati, mostly by railroad.

Checked against the record. We checked the Huntingdon Journal of 26 March, 4 June, 11 June and 18 June 1850, and the Lewistown Gazette of 7 June and 14 June 1850, in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive. The Journal’s “Thursday last” in its 11 June issue means 6 June, and Africa, Lytle and Welch each give that day for the first locomotive. The regular passenger trains began on Friday, 7 June. Welch’s history was read on its page images, and the Africa and Lytle histories were checked against their text. Still open: none of the 1850 items quoted here names Mount Union. The locomotive passing through Mount Union rests on Welch, who wrote 59 years later. The trial trip and the name Henry Clay come from Lytle, who wrote 26 years later, and we have not seen a railroad company record of these trips. The 26 March item does not say whether a locomotive drew the cars to Shaver’s Aqueduct.

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