Centre Furnace was the first charcoal iron furnace in what would become Centre County. The remains of the furnace stack on East College Avenue are a reminder of the role the iron industry played in the early decades of the county’s history.
Unionville was founded as a Quaker settlement and for decades was one of the lumber-producing centers of the Bald Eagle Valley. Located five miles west of Milesburg, the town is on the State Road from Philadelphia where it climbs the Allegheny Front to Philipsburg and eventually to Erie.
The Boal Mansion is the ancestral home of one of Centre County’s most distinguished families. Since 1952, it has been operated as a museum.
Moshannon State Forest is a 190,000-acre forest in the Allegheny Plateau region of central Pennsylvania, managed by the Commonwealth for both ecosystem preservation and the production of timber for sale.
The Gamble Mill, located near the Lamb Street bridge in Bellefonte, was a water-powered gristmill built more than two centuries ago. It was an important part of the history of Bellefonte and of the more than 150 years of grain milling in Centre County. The Gamble Mill is one of only three mills still standing in the Spring Creek watershed.
Way Fruit Farm is a sixth-generation family farm that has expanded to include a retail store and tourism events. The Ways were a pioneering Quaker family that came to the Halfmoon Valley in 1792. Caleb and Jane Way built a farm in Stormstown, and in 1826 one of their children bought 90 acres that became the farm.
McCoy’s Dam on Spring Creek provided hydroelectric power for Centre County during the first half of the twentieth century. The dam, south of Milesburg, was idled for five decades before being razed in 2007 to improve the creek’s water quality.
The Pattee and Paterno Libraries are one of the nation’s largest research libraries and serve as the headquarters of a statewide library system that encompasses Penn State’s twenty-four campuses. The building complex was built in stages and has been periodically renovated over the years.
Scotia was the scene of iron ore mining from the late 1700s to the 1940s, supplying ore to Centre County’s early iron furnaces and, years later, to Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh steel mills.The iron pits are part of a larger area now known as the Scotia Barrens, covering parts of Half Moon, Patton, and Ferguson townships.
St. John’s United Church of Christ is a historic church in Boalsburg that is home to the oldest pipe organ in Centre County. It organized as German Reformed congregation on May 31, 1822 and the current church was built forty years later.