Edinboro: The Oldest Teacher-Training School West of the Alleghenies

Edinboro, Pennsylvania, sits in Erie County near the Ohio border, and its Scottish-descended founders gave it a name that nods to Edinburgh across the Atlantic. The town's lasting contribution to the region came in eighteen fifty-seven, when local settlers established the Edinboro Academy, a private school aimed at training Pennsylvania teachers. It was the oldest institution of its kind west of the Allegheny Mountains and among the oldest in the state.

Four years after opening, in eighteen sixty-one, it affiliated with the Commonwealth and became one of Pennsylvania's early State Normal Schools, helping to supply qualified teachers to an expanding frontier population. The state eventually purchased the school outright in nineteen fourteen. It grew from a small academy into a full university.

Today it operates as Pennsylvania Western University's Edinboro campus. The original Academy Hall still stands on the grounds, serving as the undergraduate admissions office, its brickwork intact from the eighteen fifties. The borough itself is older than the school.

William Culbertson moved to the area in eighteen oh one and built a gristmill near Conneauttee Lake, and Edinboro incorporated in eighteen forty with two hundred thirty-two residents. Fires in nineteen oh two, nineteen oh five and nineteen oh nine destroyed most of the wooden commercial buildings downtown. Academy Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand six.

Interstate Seventy-Nine is two and a half miles west on United States Route Six North.