Cambria County: Wales in Pennsylvania, and the Man Who Found the North Pole

Cambria County carries a name reaching back to Roman Britain, the Latin word for Wales. That was no accident: the Welsh settlers who established communities here in the early nineteenth century saw in these Allegheny highlands a landscape that reminded them of home. The county was formed in eighteen oh four from parts of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Somerset counties, and its seat at Ebensburg was incorporated in eighteen twenty-five.

Transportation shaped its destiny: the famous Allegheny Portage Railroad, an engineering marvel that lifted canal boats over the Allegheny Summit on a series of inclined planes, passed through here before descending west to Johnstown. The county was also the birthplace of Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, the naval officer who led the expedition that claimed the North Pole in nineteen oh nine.

Whether Peary truly reached the Pole remains debated, but he was the dominant figure of American polar exploration, and the hills of Cambria County can claim him as their own.