ABCs of Centre County

Underwood Mills/Beaver Mills/Star Mill (Rush) – Much of the Black Moshannon area provided lumber early in its history, with logs splashed into the McCord Dam on Forge Run and rafted to Williamsport. Other lumber went by wagon and sled to Philipsburg, Julian, and Unionville. During the peak of the lumbering industry, a school accommodating 65 pupils was built at Star Mill. Later fire clay was located on Six Mile Run. Some fifty miners were employed there in the early part of this century with a tram road and dinkey carrying the clay to the mouth of Six Mile Run where it was shipped to a refractory at Beech Creek. In 1930 the region was sold to the Commonwealth and developed as the present Black Moshannon State Park. The Black Moshannon airport was constructed just before World War II.

Unionville Borough/Fleming – "The town wears an air of thrift and substance". (John Blair Linn, 1883)

In 1848 William Underwood left his business as a Bellefonte carriage maker to lay out the village of Unionville. A Quaker originally from York County, Underwood operated a gristmill and large lumber mill, managed a store, and for a few years served as the community's only doctor. Other members of the Society of Friends joined Underwood in the 1840s, making Unionville a major Quaker settlement in the county. The Bald Eagle Valley had been an important lumbering area before 1848. Lumber camps provided charcoal for nearby iron furnaces.

Unionville was excellently situated at the junction of the Old Plank Road (now Rt. 220) along the foothills of the Allegheny Front, and the Rattlesnake Pike (Rt. 504) westward over the front, and along Bald Eagle Creek and DeWitt Run. The Tyrone and Lock Haven Railroad, completed in 1864, enhanced Unionville's role as an agricultural and trade center. The railroad carried passengers until after World War II.