Falls Creek, Pennsylvania: From Two Villages to One Borough

Falls Creek sits beside the Jefferson and Clearfield county line in north-central Pennsylvania, and it spent its early decades confused about its own name. The borough was platted in eighteen ninety-one and incorporated in nineteen hundred, taking its name from the nearby creek. Around the turn of the century it was booming, and local accounts describe lumber yards, sawmills, glass plants, a tannery, a brick works, and a stone quarry made it a rival to neighboring DuBois in size and ambition. The timber eventually ran out, as it always did in Pennsylvania's north woods, and Falls Creek settled into the quieter life it keeps today.