New Baltimore, Pennsylvania

New Baltimore sits in a Somerset County valley, on the bottomlands of the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River. Michael Riddlemoser, who came from Baltimore, Maryland, built the first house here in eighteen twenty and laid out the street plan in eighteen twenty-nine, naming the village New Baltimore after his hometown. Early residents called it Mosersburg.

In the eighteen eighties, the village seemed on the verge of transformation: a major railroad yard for the South Pennsylvania Railroad was planned for New Baltimore. Construction crews broke ground and then the project collapsed, leaving unfinished earthworks but no tracks. The borough incorporated in eighteen seventy-four and today remains a quiet rural community of a few hundred residents in a setting that has changed surprisingly little since Riddlemoser first arrived.