24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Mount Union, PA

Mount Union is a borough in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, on the Juniata River in the shadow of Jacks Mountain, about 12 miles southeast of the borough of Huntingdon.

Mount Union was settled in 1849 and incorporated in 1867, growing first as a canal-era village on the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal.

Mount Union's nickname is 'Bricktown USA': it was once the world's largest producer of refractory silica brick, with three plants — Harbison-Walker, General Refractories and United States Refractories — firing brick made from ganister rock quarried out of Jacks Mountain.

The silica brick industry ran in Mount Union from 1899 to about 1972, and at its height the town was promoted as 'the silica brick capital of the world.'

The brick boom nearly tripled Mount Union's population in a single decade, from 1,086 in 1900 to 3,338 in 1910, and the population peaked at 4,892 in 1930.

Mount Union's population was 2,308 at the 2020 census, and the 2000 census counted 1,166 households in the borough.

Mount Union was the northern terminus of the narrow-gauge East Broad Top Railroad, which maintained a large dual-gauge yard and coal-cleaning plant in town and hauled coal to the brick works until the railroad ceased operations in 1956.

The Mount Union Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, covers over two-thirds of the borough and contains more than 300 significant historic structures.

The famous Thousand Steps of the Standing Stone Trail, a stairway built by quarry workers up Jacks Mountain, stand in Jacks Narrows about two miles west of Mount Union.

The Creation Festival, one of the largest Christian music festivals in the United States, was hosted just outside Mount Union in Shirleysburg from 1984 to 2022, drawing thousands of visitors each June.