Centre County Government

4. A Close Brush with Appalachia

Charcoal iron barely survived the Panic of 1857, but soft-coal iron boomed for another 50 years in the county. Gradually the physical base of the industry in Centre County changed to extraction—the exporting of coal and iron ore—as the refining process migrated to Pittsburgh. But part of the wealth feeding the capital it took to bring the Iron City's economic miracle into being remained in Centre County hands.

Ironmaster Moses Thompson survived the 1857 panic because he had inherited many farms and invested in more with the money iron manufacture brought him. He was able to buy up Furnace lands at distress prices and at his death in 1891 was regarded as the largest landholder in Centre County. But his most astute act was acquiring the technological edge to. realize he alone could offer Andrew Carnegie the nearby phosphorous-free iron ore that the new Bessemer steel process needed. Thompson coolly sold just 365 acres of Scotia ore land to Carnegie for $90,000, plus a royalty of $.25 a ton in 1880. The yawning pit at Scotia testifies not to the richness of the Gatesburg-formation ore extracted there but to its phosphorous-free chemistry.

County's economic regions drawn on 1874 map. Notice how the 'belt' of the Pennsylvania RR across the middle of the county controls access to the industrial townships.

But hardball capitalism, with an assist from geography, kept Centre County railroad-poor. The Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Railroad controlled linkups at the county's borders and granted access to its network only on its own terms. Carnegie acquired the linkup for Scotia. Bellefonte had to pay through the nose to get its iron out at Milesburg. As for State College—to reach State College by rail from the southeast you had first to ride to Bellefonte via Lemont; transfer there; then swing back over to Matternville on your way to campus, on a rail line that stopped at every ore pit on its way. Shipping stagnated; local heavy industry languished.

Farming, that so dependably rewarded a family's hard work with slowly accumulating wealth, suffered. Railroads let western wheat undercut the county's most valuable grain export, and the agricultural ladder became a treadmill. And railroads ran both ways.

Young teacher Samuel Gramly, anxious to change his career for farming, spoke for his whole generation when he wrote in his diary, after his first train ride in 1859:

Before this time I had never seen an Engine nor a Car going. But I liked it very much, and if I had means I would soon see some of my friends in the West.

Thousands of young countians took that ride during the next half-century.

Coal mines made Clearfield's population soar 1870-1920 with immigrants from Italy, then Eastern Europe. Centre's slump 1900 to 1940 ended with Penn State's expansion. From 1920 mine closures have have undermined Clearfield County's economy.

Narrow-gauge tram railroads opened the county's towering forests in the last two decades of the 19^th century and for a time lumbering took up the slack. By 1900 the prime pine had been timbered out and clearcutting for wood props to shore up mines in nearby counties stripped whole mountainsides. Massive fires darkened the skies in dry springs and falls most years between 1860 and 1930, and blackened thousands of acres of cutover lands. The "Pennsylvania desert" etched deeply into Centre County with its erosion and floods. With other "Juniata Valley" counties like Huntingdon, Mifflin, and Perry, our towns and farms sank towards depression, joblessness, and stagnant poverty.

In the early 1900s nostalgic clubs named Centre County Associations met in the cities of Philadelphia, Chester, Altoona, and Pittsburgh. Expatriates who had left our valleys in search of jobs banded together to lament the decline in the county's population.