Somerset County Pennsylvania

Somerset County Courthouse is located at 111 East Union Street, Somerset PA 15501; phone: 814-445-1400.

Beginnings [1]

Formed April 17, 1795; named for Somerset, England. Chief industries are agriculture and mining. A mountain country of remarkable beauty, largely forests, although glades, or natural meadows, about the headwaters of streams are numerous and extensive enough to have the name, "The Glades," applied to the whole county; standing on the summit of either mountain range that bounds it, east and west, one gets a view of unsurpassed beauty; at distance of twenty miles the other stands out in bold outline, with intervening country of hill, valley, forest, glade, and numerous watercourses, which find their way to the Ohio, Susquehanna, and Potomac rivers; immortalized in James Whitcomb Riley's 'Mongst the Hills of Somerset."

Nearly all this country, between the crests of the Allegheny Mountains and Laurel Hills, is one vast coal field, extending over the entire length, from Maryland to Cambria County, every vein of coal from the great Pittsburgh seam down being represented. Traditions of Indian villages are in the famous Turkey Foot, Casselman River forms middle toe at town of Confluence; also in Elk Lick township, Indian arrowheads and stone implements are found. In 1749, Christopher Gist, agent of the Ohio Company, was the first white man known to have crossed Somerset County; his route, along Nemacolin's trail, a Delaware Indian chief, led him through Addison Township and to the, later known, Great Crossing; again passing through in 1750, he kept a diary.

1. Archambault, A. Margaretta, ed., A Guide Book of Art, Architecture, and Historic Interests in Pennsylvania, John C. Winston Company, Philadelphia, 1924