Lewistown Station
Granville Township, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The oldest surviving structure known to have been built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, this station was constructed in 1848-49 as a freight handling warehouse. On September 1, 1849, this was the scene of a banquet celebrating the opening of the railroad to Lewistown. The building was renovated and converted into a passenger station in 1868.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Built in 1848-49 as a freight warehouse, this is the oldest surviving structure known to have been raised by the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad — the company that would become one of the largest corporations on earth. Its opening was toasted at a banquet in September 1849 celebrating the rails' arrival in Lewistown, part of the great mid-century push to lace the state with iron. By 1868 the freight house had been remade into a passenger station, greeting travelers where goods once moved.
Why it matters
The building marks the earliest physical footprint of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the enterprise that stitched the commonwealth together and helped power America's industrial rise.
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Related events
- · Opening of the Pennsylvania Railroad to Lewistown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mifflin County
Lewistown, PA · est. 1981
Established in 1789 from Cumberland and Northumberland counties, Mifflin County took its name from Thomas Mifflin, an early governor of the commonwealth. Its seat, Lewistown, was laid out the following year as settlers pushed into the Juniata Valley. In the decades that followed the county became important to Pennsylvania's canal era and its early iron industry, twin engines of the state's rise.
Travel History
Derry Township, PA · est. 1947
At this bend of the Juniata River, four generations of American movement stacked up in a single view: the old stone turnpike later paved over in concrete, the crumbling towpath and locks of a canal, the memory of river craft that once poled goods upstream, and the Pennsylvania Railroad cutting along the far bank. Each replaced the last as the nation's appetite for faster, cheaper transport reshaped the Appalachian valleys in the 1800s. The Juniata corridor was one of the great gateways west, and every mode of travel left its trace here.
Three Locks
Granville Township, PA · est. 1947
Preserved here are three locks of the Juniata Division of the state-built Pennsylvania Canal, notable because three locks and their levels sat side by side—an unusual concentration on the line. Opened in the canal-building era of the 1830s, this waterway carried boats over the ridges between the Susquehanna and the west. The old stonework and the traced bed of the canal still mark the route.
John I. Thompson Grain Elevator and Coal Sheds
College Township, PA · est. 2006
Built in 1885 by Lemont founder Moses Thompson for his son John, this grain elevator and coal shed complex became a bustling center of trade for Centre County. Grain moved out and coal came in over the Bellefonte, Nittany & Lemont Railroad, later folded into the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad, tying this rural community into the wider industrial economy. The wooden buildings are now rare survivors of a once-common rural commercial form, and Moses Thompson also helped found the school that became Penn State University.