Ridgway residents proud of their town history

By: WJAC Web Staff
RIDGWAY, Pa. -- The town of Ridgway may not be the largest, but it certainly has a lot of history behind it.
Ridgway was found by Jacob Ridgway, a wealthy businessman and ship builder from Philadelphia. He settled the land in 1817 because the materials he needed for work were abundant, like white pine trees.
Town historian Bob Imhof said the town of Ridgway back then isn't like the town of today.
"This is not the original town site of Ridgway. The original town site is about 6 and a half miles outside of Ridgway, on what was called the Montmorenci Farm," Imhof said. "What they found rather quickly is that, weather, too short a growing season, [and] the ground was incredibly acidic because of the pine and hemlock that were here."
Those pine and hemlock trees were the major structure of the forests at that time, Imhof said.
"So after two to three years, they decided maybe we should move down the river valley," Imhof said. "River valleys tend to be more fertile anyway."
The town didn't grow very fast at first. By 1850 there were only 240 people.
The lumber and tannery industries offered the lore of more jobs and the Clarion River made for a decent commute. Things changed, however, when the railroads were built.
"This town became this hub, not unlike what Altoona was, in the sense of the major railroads. There were actually four of them converged on Ridgway," Imhof said. "It finally began to open up this region, dramatically. More for development because up until that point, your only mode of transportation around here was the Clarion River."
Culture flourished in the region and suddenly Ridgway became a destination for the arts.
"The families of the founding members of this town, a lot of their culture they started to bring from New England and New York State to this part of the country, which was still a wilderness," Imhof said. "There was fresh seafood came in every day on the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Hyde Hotel.
Ridgway eventually became home to more millionaires per capita than any other place in the United States.
"Even though we're in the wilderness, we're in rural Pennsylvania, this had a very, very strong cultural background to it," Imhof said. "It had six performing theatres at one time. It had an opera house. The opera house actually, which sat directly next to where the bank building was, was actually larger in seating capacity than the opera house in Philadelphia."
But like so many towns built around the timber industry, there were significant fires.
"In 1880 the buildings across the street, this entire section of town was completely burned to the ground," Imhof said. "That's why everything you see now is brick."
Fires nearly wiped the town off the map, and so did floods.
The same rain system that, in part, caused the great Johnstown Flood of 1889 caused significant flooding in Ridgway, damaging much of the town's infrastructure.
But like so many times before, the town managed to bounce back.
The Ridgway Heritage Council offers several walking tours of the borough that visitors can take, and there's also a town history center, that's celebrating its 50 year anniversary this year.