Mifflin County: Canals, Iron, and a Governor's Name

Mifflin County was carved out of Cumberland and Northumberland counties on September nineteenth, seventeen eighty-nine, and named for Thomas Mifflin, who would serve as Pennsylvania's governor from seventeen ninety to seventeen ninety-nine. Mifflin had been a Continental Army general and one of the signers of the Constitution, so putting his name on a new county was a meaningful political gesture in the young republic. The county seat of Lewistown was laid out the following year and incorporated in seventeen ninety-five.

The Juniata River valley location made Mifflin County a key corridor in Pennsylvania's canal era, with the Main Line of Public Works threading through the county in the eighteen thirties and linking Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The region also developed an early iron industry, smelting ore from the surrounding ridges in furnaces that once lit the valley at night. Today Lewistown remains the heart of this quiet central Pennsylvania county.