The Conveyor that Cost a Neighborhood

For most of the plant's life the ganister came from the far side of the Juniata and had to be hauled across the river and across the main line. In the late 1940s Harbison-Walker moved the mining to the mountainside directly above the plant and set the crushing and washing at intervals down the slope, with an overhead conveyor to bring the rock the rest of the way in.

That decision took about a hundred company houses with it. The Ganister Hill neighborhood stood in the way, and the conveyor belt ran between two of the houses. Residents were allowed to buy their own homes for salvage, for around two hundred dollars, and a good deal of that lumber went back up as new houses in the flats along the river. To shelter the families who were displaced, the Huntingdon County housing authority built its first federally supported project on the east edge of town.

Checked 2026-08-28 · Historic Mount Union collection

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