Blair County
Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed on February 26, 1846 from Bedford and Huntingdon counties. Named for the Hon. John Blair, a prominent citizen who died in 1832. Hollidaysburg, county seat, was incorporated 1836. City of Altoona, founded 1849, became a major railroad center.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Formed in 1846 and named for the prominent citizen John Blair, this county sits in the Allegheny highlands with Hollidaysburg as its seat. Its fortunes were transformed by the coming of the railroad: the city of Altoona, founded in 1849, grew into one of the great railroad centers of America. There the Pennsylvania Railroad built vast shops that employed generations of workers.
Why it matters
Altoona embodies how the railroad remade the American landscape, turning a mountain outpost into a hub of the nation's most powerful transportation network.
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Related people
- · John Blair
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Canal Basin
Hollidaysburg, PA · est. 1982
At Hollidaysburg, the 127-mile Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal met the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an ingenious system that hauled canal boats over the mountains toward Johnstown, 36 miles west. The canal opened in 1832 and the railroad in 1834, together forming a continuous route across the formidable Allegheny barrier. Engineers marveled at the portage line, which climbed nearly 1,400 feet in just ten miles using inclined planes.
Altoona
Altoona, PA · est. 1947
Altoona was born of the railroad, laid out in 1849 as the mountain-base terminal from which the Pennsylvania Railroad pushed its tracks westward over the daunting Allegheny front. Within a generation the town's yards and shops made it one of the great railroading centers of the nation. In 1867 it hosted a War Governors' Conference, one of several wartime and postwar gatherings that made the city a meeting ground for state leaders.
Pennsylvania Railroad Shops
Altoona, PA · est. 1996
In 1850 the Pennsylvania Railroad laid its first track to Altoona and built its first repair shops there, and the town grew up around the industry. Nestled at the foot of the Allegheny grade, Altoona became the beating mechanical heart of the mightiest railroad in America. By 1925 it held the nation's largest concentration of railroad shops, where some 16,500 workers built and mended the locomotives and cars that moved the country.
Railroad Shopmen's Strike of 1922
Altoona, PA · est. 2010
When American railroads moved in 1922 to roll back the wage and workplace gains that shop workers had won during World War I, more than 300,000 skilled tradesmen walked off the job in one of the largest strikes in the nation's history. The powerful Pennsylvania Railroad, whose sprawling shops in Altoona were among the largest in the world, led the industry's fierce resistance. Though the strike was broken, the bitter conflict pushed Congress toward the 1926 Railway Labor Act, which affirmed workers' right to organize.