Montour County
Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed May 3, 1850 from Columbia County. Named for the Indian woman leader, Madame Montour. Site of the first manufacture of iron T rails for railroads. Inventor of typewriter, Christopher Sholes, born here. County seat, Danville, was incorporated 1849.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Carved from Columbia County in 1850, Montour County took its name from Madame Montour, the influential Native interpreter and diplomat who moved between Indigenous nations and colonial officials. In the industrial age its seat, Danville, became a cradle of American iron, where the first iron T-rails for the nation's booming railroads were manufactured. The county also claims Christopher Sholes, born here, whose later work produced the typewriter that transformed the modern office.
Why it matters
Its small footprint links three threads of the American story — Native diplomacy, the iron that laid the rails, and an invention that reshaped how the nation wrote and worked.
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Related people
- · Madame Montour
- · Christopher Sholes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Christopher Sholes
Danville, PA · est. 1948
Born in the Susquehanna Valley in 1819, Christopher Latham Sholes learned the printer's trade in Danville before heading west to Wisconsin as a young man. There, tinkering with type and machinery, he devised the first practical typewriter, receiving his initial patent in 1868. His invention put the familiar keyboard into offices across the world and helped open clerical work to a new generation of workers.
Christopher Sholes
Liberty Township, PA · est. 1947
Christopher Latham Sholes was born near here in 1819 and learned the printing trade as a young man in Danville before heading west to Wisconsin at twenty. There he tinkered his way to a machine that would reshape communication and the workplace: the typewriter, for which he received his first patent in 1868. His invention put the printed word within reach of every office and eventually opened new employment to a generation of workers.
First Three-Wire Electric Lighting
Sunbury, PA · est. 1947
On July 4, 1883, Sunbury became a proving ground for the electric age when Thomas Edison directed the first successful use of his three-wire distribution system in the City Hotel. The three-wire design cut the amount of costly copper needed to carry power over distance, a practical breakthrough that made central-station electric lighting far more economical to build out.
Muncy Mills
Muncy Creek Township, PA · est. 1947
Around 1772 John Alward raised this valley's first gristmill, a cornerstone of any frontier settlement where neighbors brought grain to be ground into flour and meal. Burned by Native raiders in 1779 amid the Revolution's border warfare, it was rebuilt again and again—new mills rising in 1783 and 1800—and the last of them ground on until 1872, a full century of milling on one spot.