Hart's Log: A Hollow Tree on the Frankstown Path

The town of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, was once called Hartslog, and before that it had a simpler name still: Hart's Log. The name came from a single hollow tree. Between seventeen forty-four and seventeen fifty-five, a trader named John Hart used a fallen hollow log near this spot as a feeding trough for his pack horses.

The Frankstown Path, the main overland route through this region in the colonial era, ran right through the settlement that grew up around it. Travelers, traders, and eventually settlers moving through the Juniata River valley would have passed this log, rested their animals, and moved on. The tree is long gone.

The town remained, renamed and reshaped, but still carrying a faint echo of that roadside stop on an early Pennsylvania highway.