Cameron County
Emporium, Cameron County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed March 29, 1860 from Clinton, McKean, Potter and Elk counties. Named for Sen. Simon Cameron. County seat, Emporium, was incorporated 1864. Lumbering was of early importance, and flagstone at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was later quarried here.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Cameron County was pieced together in 1860 from four neighboring counties and named for U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, the powerful Pennsylvania politician who would soon serve as Lincoln's first Secretary of War. Its seat, Emporium, took shape in the 1860s in a landscape of deep forests, and lumbering drove the early economy. Flagstone quarried in the county was later chosen for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
Why it matters
A remote timber county carrying the name of a Civil War power broker — and the stone beneath the nation's most solemn military shrine — Cameron County ties the Pennsylvania backwoods to the country's grandest acts of remembrance.
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Related people
- · Simon Cameron
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First State Game Lands
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In 1920, the Pennsylvania Game Commission used money raised entirely from hunting-license fees to buy 6,288 acres of Elk County forest — the first tract in what would become the state's vast State Game Lands system. The purchase reflected a Progressive-Era conviction that wildlife and wild country were public resources worth conserving for everyone, and that hunters themselves should foot the bill. From this single Elk County parcel grew a statewide network now covering well over a million acres.
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Clearfield County
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Jefferson County
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