Gallitzin is a

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English language, English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History ...

in Cambria County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. It is bordered by Gallitzin Township and Tunnelhill, all of which sit astride the Eastern

continental divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

. Tunnel Hill and Gallitzin both are pierced by railroad tunnels shortening the necessary ascent for rails crossing the

Allegheny Front The Allegheny Front is the major southeast- or east-facing escarpment in the Allegheny Mountains in southern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, eastern West Virginia, and western Virginia. The Allegheny Front forms the boundary between the Ridge-an ...

onto the

Allegheny Plateau The Allegheny Plateau ( ) is a large dissected plateau area of the Appalachian Mountains in western and central New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. It is divided into the unglacia ...

which encompasses the towns' terrains. Topping the gaps of the Allegheny, the area is one of only five major breaks in the

Appalachians The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain ...

allowing east–west transportation corridors before the advent of 20th century technologies.

History

Dutch traders and trappers friendly to the Susquehannock may have visited the region about 1620, as the town sits atop a

mountain pass A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since mountain ranges can present formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both Human migration, human and animal migration t ...

through which the ancient Amerindian trails (later renamed the

Kittanning Path The Kittanning Path was a major east-west Native American trail that crossed the Allegheny Mountains barrier ridge connecting the Susquehanna River valleys in the center of Pennsylvania to the highlands of the Appalachian Plateau and thence t ...

) transited. The plateau atop the escarpment was the domain of the

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages () are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, almost all surviving I ...

confederations of the

Erie people The Erie people were an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian-speaking tribe, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio b ...

and the Susquehannock peoples, both sharing the byways and hunting lands of the Allegheny Mountains until about the mid-1650s. The Susquehannock and

are known to have traded through the area, one of the few avenues the Erie, who dominated the hunting lands west of the Alleghenies, had to obtain by firearms; though, by all accounts, all the tribes in contact with the numerous Erie were reluctant to trade them firearms.ERIE HISTORY
http://www.dickshovel.com/erie.html, 2016-0612 Further, Susquehannocks are quoted to have expected 800 Erie warriors in 1662 to join in their war with the Iroquois.
http://www.dickshovel.com/erie.html, 2016-0612, quote: "In 1662 the Susquehannock told the Dutch they expected 800 Honniasont warriors to join them in their war with the Iroquois. Honniasont is a Iroquoian word meaning "wearing something around the neck" and refers to the Black Mingua habit of wearing a black badge on their chests. The Honniasont (Black Mingua) are believed to have been a division of the Erie that lived around the upper Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. 800 warriors would require a population in excess of 3,000 and may have been an exaggeration (Susquehannock or Dutch). It does, however, indicate that there was a large group still free in 1662, but they were gone by 1679." By 1675, both the Susquehannocks and Erie tribes would both fall to rampant multiple-years of epidemic diseases, in combination with the vicious multi-decade internecine territorial bloodletting known as the

Beaver Wars The Beaver Wars (), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (), were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Great L ...

, which left the Alleghenies a remote hunting ground of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederation. By the early 1700s, the Delaware people still living along the eastern seaboard were increasingly treated as bad or worse than slaves, and displaced clear across the breadth of Pennsylvania to beyond the Allegheny Front, where they settled along the rivers of Western Pennsylvania. One of their larger settlements, and closest to the gaps of the Allegheny, was the Amerindian town of Kittanning along the middle reaches of the

Allegheny River The Allegheny River ( ; ; ) is a tributary of the Ohio River that is located in western Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York in the United States. It runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border, nor ...

. These towns would generally ally themselves with the French during the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War, 1754 to 1763, was a colonial conflict in North America between Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of France, France, along with their respective Native Americans in the United States, Native American ...

, causing settlers in central Pennsylvania to mount a guard and patrol on the gaps. By the late 1700s, the remnant Seneca and Cayuga that became known as the Ohio Iroquois or

Mingo The Mingo people are an Iroquoian group of Native Americans, primarily Seneca and Cayuga, who migrated west from New York to the Ohio Country in the mid-18th century, and their descendants. Some Susquehannock survivors also joined them, a ...

would have ranged the area, especially because they were known to make their towns along defensible hill tops and kept to the uplands. With iron and coal discovered west of the gaps, white settlers began traveling west through the area around the time the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

came to a close. By 1824, the visionary Main Line of Public Works legislation had been debated and signed and the construction of the

Allegheny Portage Railroad The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. It operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connecte ...

soon began aiming to connect Pittsburgh and the

Ohio Country The Ohio Country (Ohio Territory, Ohio Valley) was a name used for a loosely defined region of colonial North America west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Lake Erie. Control of the territory and the region's fur trade was disputed i ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

by canals. In 1838, this plan was altered to incorporate the rapidly-developing and ever more capable railroad technology. In 1845, the Pennsylvania legislature required the new Pennsylvania Railroad to cross the mountains, and the surveyed route would create Gallitzin, which began life as 'Summit Tunnel'. A Railroad town standing west of Altoona, it was first incorporated in 1872, and named for Prince Gallitzin, who founded the

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

town of Loretto in Cambria County. Coal mining, the Pennsylvania Railroad yard in the town center and the production of coke were important industries. The town still sports an important rail yard with a turning wye for helper engine turnaround and holds two rail tunnels leading east and downward from the yard trackage to the famous PRR Horseshoe Curve, whose upper approaches are within the town. Gallitzin is listed by the US Census Bureau as part of the Johnstown Metropolitan Statistical Area, although local sources consider it part of the Altoona area, due to being located closer to Altoona than to Johnstown. In 1900, 2,759 people lived in Gallitzin, and by 1910, that number had risen to 3,504 people. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 1,668. Gallitzin is known for its historic

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

tunnels ( Gallitzin Tunnels), which are a minor tourist draw. The scenic Horseshoe Curve and the

historic site are also nearby situated in different gaps of the Allegheny.

Geography

Gallitzin is located in eastern Cambria County at (40.481816, -78.552336), along the eastern edge of the

, a highland area of hills and small streams formed differently from the

Ridge-and-valley Appalachians The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands division. The physiographic province is divided into three se ...

to the east and south of the plateau's edge, the Allegheny Ridge in Pennsylvania. Sitting astride the eastern

Continental divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

along the edge of the Allegheny Front

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

, the immediate area is lower than other portions of the

Appalachian Plateau The Appalachian Plateau is a series of rugged dissected plateaus located on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains are a range that run from Nova Scotia in Canada to Alabama in the United States. The Appalachi ...

, so contains several small streams and

freshet The term ''freshet'' is most commonly used to describe a snowmelt, an annual high water event on rivers resulting from snow and river ice melting. Description A spring freshet can sometimes last several weeks on large river systems, resulting ...

s forming the gaps of the Allegheny Escarpment to the east, where the ground falls away rapidly, forming steep terrain

landform A landform is a land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. They may be natural or may be anthropogenic (caused or influenced by human activity). Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement ...

s. According to the

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...

, the borough has a total area of , all land. Gallitzin has the tenth-highest elevation of towns in Pennsylvania, at .Highest Elevation of Towns in Pennsylvania
/ref>

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2000, there were 1,756 people, 700 households, and 476 families residing in the borough. The population density was . There were 763 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the borough was 98.86%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 0.11%

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

, 0.23% Native American, 0.06% Asian, and 0.74% from two or more races.

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

or Latino of any race were 0.85% of the population. There were 700 households, out of which 30.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.7% were

married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...

living together, 12.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.9% were non-families. 29.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.10. In the borough the population was spread out, with 23.1% under the age of 18, 9.9% from 18 to 24, 28.6% from 25 to 44, 21.9% from 45 to 64, and 16.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 88.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.4 males. The median income for a household in the borough was $32,386, and the median income for a family was $38,438. Males had a median income of $29,022 versus $19,550 for females. The

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...

for the borough was $14,216. About 7.2% of families and 10.2% of the population were below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, including 13.1% of those under age 18 and 10.3% of those age 65 or over.

Notable people

* Robert E. Casey, Pennsylvania State Treasurer *

Pauline Frederick Pauline Frederick (born Pauline Beatrice Libbey; August 12, 1883 – September 19, 1938) was an American stage and film actress. Early life Frederick was born Pauline Beatrice Libbey (later changed to Libby) in Boston in 1883 (some sources stat ...

, journalism pioneer * Gertrude McDermott, Catholic Benedictine nun * Don Rittner, author, filmmaker and historian *

Robert Peary Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was long credited as being ...

, explorer and naval officer * Mildred Weston, composer

Notes

References

External links

* {{authority control Populated places established in 1849 Boroughs in Cambria County, Pennsylvania 1873 establishments in Pennsylvania