Mount Union developed from several small settlements clustered around a river crossing, canal facilities, roads, stores, and later the railroad. One of those early places was called Santa Fe.
In 1848, James Kelley and Dr. William Brewster built a warehouse along the Pennsylvania Canal, together with a store and tavern a short distance below John Sharrar’s warehouse. According to the 1883 History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, they named the place “Santa Fe.”
The tavern was later identified as the Exchange Hotel at Santa Fe. This was more than an isolated building name: the warehouse, store, tavern, and surrounding activity gave the eastern portion of the growing village a recognizable local identity.
A January 24, 1961, Daily News feature, “Two Pioneer Taverns,” placed two early hotels in the waterfront community. It reported that John Sharrar opened a tavern in 1848 in the American Hotel on Water Street. At the eastern end, near the old warehouse, Kelley and Brewster established the tavern first known as the Exchange Hotel and later as the Santa Fe Hotel.
The article uses “first tavern” for both the Sharrar establishment and the Kelley-Brewster tavern in different parts of the story. With both linked to 1848, the clipping does not settle which opened first. What it does show clearly is that two taverns served the growing canal-side village and that the Exchange Hotel became closely identified with Santa Fe.
A later local history preserved residents’ recollection that the eastern end of the village was called Santa Fe while the Narrows end was called Mount Union. The account describes a period of rivalry between the two names before Mount Union ultimately became the name associated with the combined community.
Another short-lived settlement name, Clintonville, was associated with the southern end of the canal bridge. The 1961 newspaper account adds a local tradition, attributed to the town’s oldest residents, that the eastern end was called Clintonville before it became Santa Fe. These overlapping names show that present-day Mount Union did not emerge as a single, fully formed town. It grew as canal-era settlements and commercial sites gradually joined together.
The same article credited veteran boatman John Dougherty with giving Mount Union its present name, possibly in reference to the “union of the mountains.” Because this is a later newspaper tradition and differs in emphasis from other published histories, it is best treated as a remembered explanation rather than a settled fact.
The 1883 county history records a succession of owners and operators. George W. Speer followed Kelley and Brewster in the Santa Fe business. John W. Smith later purchased the property and sold it to George McLaughlin and John Bare. After their partnership ended, McLaughlin became sole proprietor and sold most of the property to William H. Woods of Huntingdon in 1868.
The tavern was sold separately to William Shaver. By 1883 it was owned by Shaver’s heirs and occupied as a tenant house. A later local history reported that the old warehouse was also used as housing during its declining years and was eventually destroyed by fire.
The historical descriptions place Santa Fe on the bank of the Pennsylvania Canal, below the Sharrar warehouse, in the eastern portion of the developing village. The National Park Service likewise treats Santa Fe as one of several early settlements that contributed to Mount Union’s formation.
Those descriptions are enough to establish the neighborhood’s historical setting, but not enough to attach Santa Fe to a specific present-day building or parcel. A precise modern marker should wait for comparison of the 1840 survey, canal maps, deeds, and later property records.
In April 1976, Mount Union’s Bicentennial Committee approved a group of permanent historic-marker sites. Among the locations listed in The Daily News was the “site of Exchange Hotel of Santa Fe, 1848.” The committee authorized Elizabeth Goodman to proceed with the markers after she and Mike Dimoff selected the sites.
The report said the markers were to have a blue background with red-and-white trim and that the total cost was not to exceed $600. The newspaper confirms the local importance assigned to the Santa Fe site during the Bicentennial, but it does not provide a street address or confirm in the article that the marker was installed.