Bloomsburg

The town of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania is the county seat of Columbia County. In 1772, James McClure built a log cabin in what is now Bloomsburg but was then a small village called Bloom Township. The village was founded in 1802, and in 1822, a field laborer noticed a strange color in the ground which he was plowing. He told his boss, who had the soil assayed, it was discovered that the soil was rich with iron ore. Mining began almost immediately, but for nearly twenty years, the ore was hauled to out-of- town furnaces rather than locally, because there were no furnaces in Bloomsburg. The Bloomsburg Rail-Road and Iron Company completed their furnaces in 1844, and soon, by 1877 companies including a machine shop and foundry, manufacturers of mine cars, and numerous other iron manufacturing companies followed, and that is how the iron industry became the bread-and-butter of Bloomsburg. In 1882, woolen mills were established, and later, the Bloomsburg School Furnishing Company and the Bloomsburg Planing and Cabinet Company. The town, which was the only incorporated for more than 100 years, is still booming.

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