The history of Tyrone is closely integrated with the histories of its surrounding farms and forests. One of the most notable natural features of northern Blair County is the water gap between Bald Eagle Mountain and Brush Mountain just east of downtown Tyrone — known locally as sunny side and shady side of “The Cut” — where the Little Juniata River cuts to the southeast on its way toward Huntingdon. In the middle of the river gap, about one-half mile east of the center of town, a small stream comes down off Brush Mountain on the right through a long, narrow hollow — Plummer Hollow — that bisects the end of the mountain.
Natural Setting
The scene that greeted the first white settlers in the Tyrone area — and particularly the first who penetrated Plummer Hollow — was undoubtedly one of a rich, old-growth forest, especially near the stream. While there are no surviving descriptions of the pre-settlement forests in the immediate Tyrone area, an early description from northern Cambria County is probably close enough to portray the landscape of northern Blair County as well.
In 1832 a German prince named Maximilian of Wied traveled through central Pennsylvania on his route west. In his subsequent book on the trip he described the days he spent examining an old-growth forest area near Ebensburg. He depicted the forests there as filled with hemlocks “of colossal magnitude” in “deep ravines, where pines, beeches, chestnuts, birches, maples, and walnut trees of various kinds, form a gloomy forest, and fallen and decayed trunks check your advance at every step; cool, sylvan brooks rushed foaming through all the defiles, and we had continually to cross them on natural bridges, formed by the fallen trunks of trees.”
While a careful examination of the forests of Plummer Hollow today confirms that Maximilian’s description probably would have fit this area too, the ridge tops of Brush Mountain in 1800 were probably quite different. Most likely they were covered primarily with oaks, hickories, pitch pines, American chestnuts, and mountain laurel. The first property surveys in the 1790s of the lands on and near Brush Mountain confirm these descriptions, with their frequent mentions of chestnut oaks as witness trees on the ridge tops, and with pines mentioned most often near the river.
First Owners of “Violet Hill”
With the end of the American Revolutionary War, Indian attacks in the Juniata Valley ceased and the northern section of what was then Huntingdon County was open for settlement by Europeans. On September 2, 1793, one John Smith applied at the Pennsylvania land office for a warrant on 400 acres on the “waters of the Little Juniatta” [sic] in what was then Tyrone Township of Huntingdon County for a purchase price of 50 shillings per hundred acres. On the same day, a man named Barney Carr made a similar application for 400 acres of land “adjoining land this day granted to John Smith and land of Jacob Roler.” A little later, on February 1, 1794, Frederick Lazarus was granted a warrant for 400 acres adjoining the Smith tract.
The surveys that were done for Smith, Carr, and Lazarus show how these properties adjoin. The Lazarus survey is particularly interesting: that tract included not only the northeastern end of Brush Mountain and the lowest part of Plummer Hollow, but it also included the Little Juniata River, the lowlands that would later become part of the downtown area of Tyrone Borough, and a fringe of land on the northern side of the River. Plummer Hollow and downtown Tyrone (before the town existed, of course) were part of the same deed!
While the owners of the Lazarus and Smith tracts clearly wanted their properties to stretch across the mountain from Sinking Valley to Logan Valley, the owner of the Carr tract wanted only mountaintop land, as his lines followed the crests of the ridges. Why was he interested primarily in the upper reaches of the hollow and the rolling mountaintop land beyond rather than arable valley property? There is no way to tell.
On September 1, 1795, the owner of the Smith and the Carr tracts deeded his lands to one Robert Stuart, who was granted patents on his properties on August 17, 1796. According to the patent he was issued for the Carr tract, either he, or one of the preceding owners, had named the property “Violet Hill.” The name was probably based on the color of the mountain in the clear light of a mid-winter afternoon, and it is possible that one of the early owners actually visited the property and was struck by the beauty of the place. Despite these land grants and surveys, settlers probably lived only in the valleys during this period — there is no evidence that anyone had yet settled on Brush Mountain or in Plummer Hollow.
Charcoal Iron
The early history of Blair County was dominated by the charcoal iron industry. While dates vary in the different sources, the first forge in what is now Blair County was founded about 1805 at Tyrone Forge, a village that still exists just east of Brush Mountain at the head of Sinking Valley. The pig iron for this forge had to be brought from the Huntingdon Furnace five and one-half miles away. The company that owned the furnace and forge quickly began buying up additional lands in the area of their forges, including the Lazarus, Smith, and Carr tracts on the end of Brush Mountain. In 1812 or 1813 the firm built another forge one-half mile up river at the end of the small stream that was later to become known as Plummer Hollow Run, and it called the new facility Upper Tyrone Forge.
During the next 45-year period, 1805 to 1850, it is likely that the only people who lived for brief periods of time in the hollow or on the mountaintop were the charcoal colliers. While it is impossible to know precisely how the owners of the property treated the hollow, we can make some reasonable assumptions based on the history of other Pennsylvania charcoal iron works where extensive documentation has survived. In the early nineteenth century the typical iron plantation was surrounded by vast areas of clear-cut forest, where hastily dug roads channeled the soil and logging debris during storm runoffs into the streams and down the rivers. Violet Hill would have been transformed into “slash hollow.”
Based on information in extant documents about the iron production of the two Tyrone forges and the typical consumption of charcoal by forges of that period, it is possible to calculate when the hollow was first clear-cut, and even when it was probably clear-cut a second time. From this data, I would estimate that the lower section of the hollow was first clear-cut in about 1813, and the woodcutters would have cleared the rest of the hollow within two years. It is also reasonable to presume that the owners would have followed the 30-year clear-cutting rotation of other nineteenth century Pennsylvania iron masters and they probably cleared the hollow again in the mid- to late-1840s. Ring counts of old tree stumps on the property show that a few trees on the mountain date from the first clear-cut of 1815 and others from the 1840s.
The history of Plummer Hollow took several new twists in 1850: the iron company sold a 55-acre parcel near the top of the hollow to a very hard-working, widely respected forgeman named William R. Plummer; then Mr. Plummer quit his job at the forge and took employment with the railroad that had just been built.
The story of Mr. and Mrs. Plummer, the first permanent residents of the hollow, and their love for the land continues in Part II of this four-part series.
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