Two Black men, Edenborough Smith and John Harshberger appear in the 1850 census on tracts of land now situated in Laurel Ridge State Park overlooking Johnstown’s West End. From at least the 1820s, and possibly as early as the turn of the 19th century, Smith, Harshberger and their families lived in a community of Black, White, and Indigenous people that has been referred to as the Laurel Hill Settlement, Brown Farm and “the Mountain.” Eight generations lived on the Mountain until the property was claimed by the state in 1967.

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