Duncansville, PA

Duncansville is a Blair County borough in the Altoona area, built along Blair Creek where two early settlements met. Samuel Duncan laid out Duncansville on the west side of the stream in 1830, while Jacob Walters laid out Walterstown on the east. Duncan's name won out, and the borough incorporated in 1891. The place then moved through an iron-and-brick industrial chapter: a forge became a rolling mill, a wire mill later made more than 400 kegs of nails a day, and the works closed in 1904.

An airport arrived in 1930 and briefly supported one of the nation's early air-mail pickup systems, with planes collecting mail without landing. Today Duncansville is tied to Hollidaysburg Area School District, the nearby Hollidaysburg Veterans' Home, and a frozen-custard business that began in 1950 and still has local recognition. The old east-west split, the creek, and the industrial history are still the best way to read the borough. Duncansville is small, but its map has more layers than its size suggests.