McAlevy's Fort: Blockhouse at the Edge of Settlement

During the American Revolution, with war burning through the frontier, William McAlevy erected a blockhouse near this site in Huntingdon County to give settlers a refuge point during raids and conflicts. McAlevy was both a pioneer settler and a Revolutionary War officer, part of the generation that fought a two-front war: one against the British and Loyalists to the east, another against the dangers of a fluid and dangerous backcountry. The fort bore his name and served its purpose through the war years.

Decades later, the village that grew here was shaped by entrepreneur Robert McBurney, who arrived in the nineteenth century and actively developed the community over the following decades. Ironworks and mills in the surrounding valley gave the village its economic reason for being, though most of that industrial heritage has long since faded from view.