Buckhorn, PA

Buckhorn is a small CDP in eastern Hemlock Township, where Fishing Creek heads south toward the Susquehanna and I-80 reaches the community at Exit 232. The name reaches back to a deer’s antlers said to have been caught in the fork of a white-oak sapling along an older Indigenous trail. Later travelers blazed a route through the valley, and the crossroads became a place to stop. Vaniah Rees built the first house in 1820; his hotel served the stage line, and a store followed in 1836.

The iron ore found around 1822 changed the scale of the settlement. Mines drew workers, and Buckhorn grew into a village with hotels, stores, a school, churches, and a post office that eventually moved from weekly mail to daily service in 1883. The mines are part of the backstory now, while the roads do the practical work: PA 42 and PA 44 serve the area, with I-80 access at Exit 232 and Bloomsburg close by. Farmland spreads out beyond the center. The local scoop is a place named for a trail marker, shaped by ore, and still read best through its creek valley and old crossroads.