Jesse Reno and the Town That Bears His Name

The town of Reno, Pennsylvania, on the Allegheny River, carries the name of a Union general who died on a Maryland mountainside in eighteen sixty-two. Jesse Lee Reno grew up in nearby Franklin and built a distinguished military career before the Civil War cut it short.

Reno served in the Mexican War and taught at West Point before the Civil War began. When it did, he commanded a brigade in Burnside's North Carolina coastal campaign, then rose to lead the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. At the Battle of South Mountain on September fourteenth, eighteen sixty-two, just three days before Antietam, Reno was shot and killed while commanding his corps in the field.

He also wrote a manual on arsenal warfare and commanded several arsenals during his career, including the one in Alabama. He was thirty-nine years old when he died. The Nevada city of Reno, far more famous than this Pennsylvania town, is also named for him, and several other places across the country also carry his name.