Why does our township bear this name?
Why does the name "Logan" also find itself frequently associated with another word, "valley"?
The answer to these questions involves the early existence of our nation, state, and country. A review of the history of the Logan Township area provides many interesting facts.
Did you know that this area once was part of Huntington County?
Did you know that the existence of Logan Township predates the City of Altoona?
Actually, we find that Altoona was formed from township land.
The early inhabitants of our area as you can quite imagine were Native Americans. As school history lessons have taught us, white settlers arrived from Western Europe and established settlements up and down the eastern coastal region of North America in the early 1600's. From this time onward there was gradual westward expansion.
After 1675, a so-to-speak union of Native American tribes known as the Iroquois Confederacy controlled the wilderness west of the Susquehanna River for use as a trade route and as a buffer zone against encroaching white settlers. The Iroquois tribe occasionally allowed other tribes that had been driven out of their homelands to settle in this area.
The series of valleys on the eastern side of the Allegheny Mountains have been used for hundreds of years as traffic routes. A major crossroad of the early Native American trails existed in present-day Blair County. From this crossroad, a traveler could take any numerous Native American paths passing through this region. Rather than follow mountaintops, trails tended to go along river terraces, above flood levels, or well drained ridges in wide valleys. The most well known trail and the most important to the settlement and development of our area was the Kittanning Trail. This was a vast system of interconnecting trails with alternate routes to be used according to the season.
One of the important leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy was the Cayaga tribe chief named Shickalemy. Shickalemy became friendly with James Logan, the secretary of the then providence of Pennsylvania, whom he met at numerous treaties in Philadelphia. The white man treated the chief well, so much that he named his sons after Logan, with the oldest son bearing the name Logan. Being the oldest son, Logan was meant to succeed his father as chief.
The Moravian missionaries baptized all of the chief's children. Logan was educated by Moravians and became a fast friend of the white settlers. Logan married and had six children. His wife and all but one child perished in a plague in 1747. Tragedy struck again in an unfortunate accident when an arrow put out one of Logan's eyes. Native Americans placed much importance on the body and this disfigurement cost him the role of chief. An outcast among his own people, Logan moved to the Tuckahoe Valley sometime prior to 1768. The Tuckahoe Valley stretched from what is now Altoona north to Tyrone. Tuckahoe is a Native American word for food plants that grow underground. This area was a favorite of Logan's during his younger years and was known as Logan's Valley.
Logan was known to be friendly to white frontiersmen and was feared by other Native Americans. These factors might explain why there were no Native American villages in the area and only one settler was killed in the valley during this era. Logan was a firm friend of the colonists during our fight for independence. He served as a spy for the colonists, as the British had an alliance with the Native Americans. After the war, the now Captain Logan lived peacefully for many years on the Bell family's property in the soon-to-be Antis Township area. Logan's son convinced him to move near him along the Allegheny River where he remained until his death in 1820 at the age of 100 years.
Early settlers in our area were English, Pennsylvania German, Scot-Irish, and Irish. Most of these settlers came from elsewhere in Pennsylvania and from Maryland. The earliest explorers/settlers in the Logan Township area were brothers, Thomas and Michael Coleman. Previously, the two, along with a younger brother John, had resided along the west branch of the Susquehanna River. One day while the older brothers hunted, John was attached by Native Americans and boiled to death in a kettle. After burying their brother, the Coleman brothers moved to what is now the northern part of Logan Township; where they settled permanently around 1770.
Although he was known to be a good friend of Captain Logan, Thomas Coleman became a greatly feared Native American killer. He was reputed to be the greatest Native American fighter in this section of Pennsylvania. Much of his success was due to his method of waging warfare on the Native Americans in their own style of fighting. In the period of unrest on the frontier in the late 1700's, Coleman was unwavering in his protection of settlers by spotting Native American war parties, warning settlers, and defending frontier forts such as Fort Fetter. Coleman's reputation may also be a strong reason why there was only one settler killed by Native Americans in Logan's Valley, as compared to several in nearby areas like the Cove area.
Fort Fetter was built in 1777, near where Hollidaysburg is now. It was not in Logan Township, but was crucial to the survival of the residents of the area that is now Logan Township. This fort was not an official military fort, but was built by nearby settlers as a gathering place for protection of families during times of trouble.
Thomas Coleman served in the Bedford County Militia during the Revolutionary War. The Supreme Council of Pennsylvania commissioned him as an Ensign in the Continental Army. He volunteered his services as a spy and guide for countless missions, traveling as far west as Fort Pitt. He died in 1833, and is buried in the Grandview Cemetery in Logan Township. Descendants of Thomas Coleman remain on the Coleman farm in north western Logan Township.
Prior to the early to mid 1800's, the soon-to-be Blair County area was a quiet farming area. In 1811, two gentlemen from Huntingdon constructed an iron furnace know as the Allegheny Furnace in what is now the Baker Mansion section of Altoona. After an explosion the furnace stood unused for eighteen years.
Between 1815, and 1825, the packhorse road, which went west up and over the mountains gradually improved. The Huntingdon-Cambria-Indiana Turnpike allowed traffic from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. To compete with other states, whom were promoting westward expansion, the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal was built as far west as Hollidaysburg in the late 1820's. Still our area was not highly populated. There were some early iron furnaces like the Allegheny Furnace early on. They did well until the War of 1812 was over, and they all shut down due to competition. The cost of transportation was high and involved loading iron onto the backs of mules in order to transport it.
The Allegheny-Portage Railroad opened in 1834 and the area boomed because of the upgrade in the transportation system. Hollidaysburg became the largest area in Huntington County as a big shipping port. Flat, sectionalized, canal boats could be removed from the water, loaded onto railroad cars and hoisted by steam engines up the mountains and down the other side to Johnstown, where the boats would go back in the water and pulled to Pittsburgh. This new method of transportation suddenly meant that the local iron business could be both competitive in Pittsburgh and down the river to the east.
Between 1825, and 1846, there were seven new iron producing furnaces, six iron forges, and a foundry built in this vicinity. One of the most important to the development of the Logan Township region was the Allegheny Furnace. In 1835, Elias Baker, a merchant, farmer, and distiller, purchased the idle furnace an it's 3,773 acres of land, which included the west side of Brush Mountain. Iron plantations used charcoal for fuel, which required the use of a large amount of trees. Thousands of acres of woodland in and around Logan Township suited the iron production process.
Baker and his family lived in one of the many log houses constructed on the plantation to house his employees. In 1844, Baker began construction of a Greek Revival-style mansion that was known locally as "Baker's Folly" for costing $75,000.00, far beyond Baker's means. When completed, it was the only structure of its kind in Central Pennsylvania.
Sylvester Baker, Elias's son, was a civil engineer whom organized the construction of a narrow-gauge wooden railroad to move coal from mines near Kittanning Point and iron ore from open pits in the village of Lakemont. These materials were used in the production of pig iron. In the beginning, most of the iron from the Allegheny Furnace was sold in Pittsburgh, but some went as far as Philadelphia, New York City, Baltimore, and Boston. The Juniata Iron Range became what was the most prosperous and efficient iron-producing region in the country from the 1830's to the 1850's. The Logan Township area was the location of two other iron firms besides the Allegheny Furnace. These were the Juniata Iron Works and Blair Furnace. Blair Furnace was built in 1846 and produced iron mostly with ore from the Frankstown area. The iron industry in our area peaked during the Civil War period. At this point the Mesabi Iron Range of the Great Lakes region began mining a richer ore with less difficulty. A combination of a better raw material delivered with easier river transportation made steel mills in Johnstown and Pittsburgh more competitive. In a short period of time, the iron industry of our region was all but gone.
As previously indicated, the area of Logan Township was part of Huntingdon County until 1846. The growth of Hollidaysburg as an important river port and transfer junction between the Pennsylvania Canal and the Portage Railroad in the 1830's spurred interest in the formation of a separate county of which Hollidaysburg would be the center. At this time, Hollidaysburg was the largest town in Huntingdon County and the nearest county seats were the towns of Huntingdon and Bedford, both a long journey away. The State of Pennsylvania was petitioned to form a new county, which was met with opposition from both Huntingdon and Bedford Counties, both of whom stood to lose land. The petition was rejected for several years until in 1846, the state approved this measure and Blair County came into being.
Of all the industries in our area, the most important to the development of Logan Township was the Pennsylvania Railroad. In an attempt not to be by-passed by western expansion, the Pennsylvania State Assembly granted the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad the right to extend their lines to Pittsburgh in 1846. The Assembly then chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad to build a railroad between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Supporters of the P.R.R. pushed the Pennsylvania governor into declaring the B & O charter null and void the following year.
Prior to the railroad, the main east/west travel route was the Pennsylvania Main Line. By utilizing animal transportation, as well as the Pennsylvania Canal and the Portage Railroad, a traveler could get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in three and a half days. This system of travel didn't always run smoothly. For example, the canal beds would often freeze in the winter. The Pennsylvania Railroad was eager to appease political interests as well as to get a jump on competing railroads, who were already planning routes to the Mid-West. The P.R.R. pushed its chief engineer, John E. Thompson, to find a faster and direct route to Pittsburgh.
Thompson, in order to conserve steam engine power, asked his team of civil engineers to survey the land and find a low-grade route through the mountains west. Their low-grade approach brought the engineers up the Juniata Valley to the base of the Allegheny Mountains. Here the P.R.R., established their base camp, thereby determining the location of Altoona and the existence of Logan Township by topography. In 1849, the P.R.R. bought land in the valley and planned to erect major railroad facilities. One of the first moves the P.R.R. made was to set up the politics of the area. They worked to have the Pennsylvania legislature cut the bottom half of Antis Township and the northern portion of Allegheny Township off to create their own township, naming after Captain Logan.
In 1850, the P.R.R. constructed a car erecting shop, a locomotive erecting shop with a foundry, a machine shop, a woodworking shop, and a paint shop between what is now Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets of Altoona.
The southwest corner of Logan Township provided the scene for one of the highest regarded engineering feats of that century. At the end of the valley the railroad civil engineers found that to continue a steady track grade they would be faced with two options to reach the same plane on the other side of an intersection of valley floor. They could build a steel bridge across, but the grade of the bridge would have severely limited the number of railcars that could be hauled. The other option which was selected was to maintain the grade west along a ridge and connect to another mountain ridge passing over two deep ravines by shearing off the face of the mountain and filling in the ravines with a earthen bank which would support the track bed. The southern most ravine was known as Kittanning Gap, which had been the thoroughfare for the Kittanning Trail. Irish immigrant laborers worked to shear off the face of the mountain, and working with picks, shovels, and horse drawn carts, built a sweeping curve that by gradually gaining height, allowed trains to defeat the mountain grade. The World Famous Horseshoe Curve opened in 1854, the same year that a portion of Logan Township was incorporated as the borough of Altoona. When the P.R.R. main line was completed in 1858, a traveler could get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in about fifteen hours.
Development of the P.R.R. in Altoona, spurred economic and population growth, not only in the borough, but in Logan Township as well. Altoona was incorporated as a city in 1868. Industry in Logan Township followed the development of the P.R.R., assisting in supplying goods and services. The railroad was a heavy user of iron and tooling.
In the late 1800's, Logan Township was the scene for leisure and recreational development, which was aided by the growth of the P.R.R. in Altoona. In 1891, a group of Altoona businessmen developed the Wopsononock Hotel at the peak of the Allegheny Mountain above Juniata and Homers Gaps. This was a mountaintop resort complete with a three story hotel, photo gallery, lookout tower, swings, lawn tennis grounds, pavilions, dancing platform, and a two horse coach between the resort and the nearby village of Highland Fling. Transportation to the resort was via a narrow gauge railroad originally called the Altoona and Wopsononock Railroad. The hotel operated until 1903, when it was consumed in a forest fire that covered the entire mountaintop. The forty-foot high lookout remained a popular spot providing a panoramic view of three counties until it was destroyed in a forest fire in 1921.
Elias Baker was the owner of the Village of Lakemont during the time he owned Allegheny Furnace. The iron ore for his business was mineral in four open pits in the Lakemont area. Many of his workers found that a particular area of Lakemont was prime location for recreation. Baker hired a crew of skilled tradesmen to construct Lakemont Park and completed the project in 1894. the park contained a casino, a dammed lake for swimming, boating, fishing, a zoo, picnic pavilions, gardens with fountains, greenhouses, a playhouse, a roller-skating rink, a swimming pool, roller coasters, and a trolley station. The park originally depended on the Altoona and Logan Township Electric Railway which began operation a few years earlier to bring park goers to the site by trolley cars.
Lakemont park has suffered through the Great Depression, a major flood in 1936, changes in ownership, bankruptcy, and a name change. Today renamed Lakemont Park, it remains a thriving amusement park with modern buildings and rides and other attractions. The original wooden roller coaster named "The Leap the Dips", remains on the grounds and has been given the historical designation as the "oldest Wooden Roller Coaster in the U.S.". Adjacent to the park, a baseball stadium named Blair County Park has been constructed to seat approximately 5,500 people. Not since the days of the Cricket Field complex in Altoona, during the heyday of the P.R.R. has this area seen such a first class sports facility.
Two other area recreational spots also graced our area. Nela Beach opened in 1923 and was located at Sixteenth Street and Pleasant Valley Boulevard. It boasted a large swimming pool and slide, sand beach, boardwalk, orchestra stand in the center of the pool, bath houses, boats, a dancing pavilion, a merry-go-round and concessions. Ivyside Park opened in 1929, and contained amusement rides, music, concessions, and picnic grounds. The park had one of the largest concrete swimming pools in the nation at that time. It was 620 feet long and 186 feet wide with an island in the middle. The pool required three million gallons of water to fill it. Ivyside Park fell victim to the Great Depression and closed in 1945. It is now the site of the Altoona Campus of the Pennsylvania State University.
The Pennsylvania Railroad inspired many immigrants to seek work and move to Logan Township and nearby areas. Some railroad workers came to the Altoona Shops by train, trolley and later bus from little mountain towns and from northern Blair and Bedford Counties. The Railroad was dominant in the area until the 1930's, when the population of the City of Altoona began to decline. The last steam engine was produced in Altoona in the 1950's, and Railroad dominance went steadily downhill.
From the 1850 beginning of Logan Township through the end of World War II, the City of Altoona was free to annex land mass from the township without its consent. The Pennsylvania legislature eventually changed the rules allowing the township to become politically powerful enough to stop this process. The largest block of annexation occurred in 1929, and more than doubled the size of Altoona. This block was the 4.57 square mile area, which included the township section of Whenwood, Fairview, Juniata, East End, Locust Hills, Eldorado, Roselawn, Llynswen, South Altoona, Garden Heights, and Lakemont Terrace.
In recent years the upward mobility of our population has increased in the township and declined in the City of Altoona. Industries, wholesalers, and retail shopping establishments have followed the population into the township providing for a strong tax base. The Logan Valley Mall constructed in the 1960's, expanded several times, and rebuilt after a fire in 1996, is an example of this trend which has been experienced all over our country.