Holeman Ferry: Gateway on the Bald Eagle Road

In the early eighteen hundreds, a man named Eli Holeman established a ferry crossing at this bend of the Allegheny River. The timing mattered. This was one of the main crossings on the old State Road, also called the Bald Eagle Road, a key overland route connecting Milesburg in Centre County with Waterford up near Lake Erie.

For the waves of settlers pushing into western Pennsylvania in the early eighteen hundreds, the Holeman Ferry was often the last major water crossing before reaching their land. Many families coming this way crossed here. During the War of eighteen twelve, the road is said to have carried troops and supplies northward as the United States scrambled to defend the Great Lakes frontier. The ferry is long gone, but the river bend and the road above it still trace the path those settlers walked.