Smithfield township

The Reformatory On The Juniata

Did you know? The state Department of Corrections calls SCI Huntingdon Pennsylvania's oldest correctional institution in continuous operation.

It was created by an act of the General Assembly on June 12, 1878. The original tract along the Juniata River, 39 acres with several springs, cost $22,036. In 1889 the Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon received its first inmates, people deemed too young for a penitentiary and too old for a juvenile facility. It was renamed in 1945, and in 1960 it became a maximum security, adult male state correctional institution.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-03 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. Information shared with us by readers is given as theirs, not as fact: Myer Souders.

Sources

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections: SCI Huntingdon (2026)

Checked 2026-10-03 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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