Port Matilda, PA

Port Matilda is a Centre County borough in the Bald Eagle Valley, with 578 residents in the 2020 census and a place in the State College metropolitan area. Squire Clement Beckwith laid out the town in 1850 and named it for his daughter, Matilda. The “Port” suggested a hoped-for connection to the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek branch of the Pennsylvania Canal, but the railroad arrived instead and made the borough a market center for farm and lumber products.

Port Matilda’s industrial chapter ran through the McFeely Brick Company, located beside the railroad on Brick Street. The plant made silica firebrick from local ganister rock and operated until 1959; its founder, Fred McFeely, was the grandfather of Fred Rogers. Today, the borough’s roads connect the Bald Eagle Valley to State College and Tyrone, while the old brick and rail story remains part of its local map. Port Matilda is a Pennsylvania borough where a hopeful canal name, a railroad, farm goods, and a family name from television history meet.