The Origin of the Name For the Village of Buckhorn in Columbia County

Each village, town, township or county receives its name from someone, or something. In the village of Buckhorn, situated in Columbia County, the something was a pair of buck antlers (horns) once used to mark an Indian trail leading from Williamsport. The story was featured in a newspaper column from Danville in 1961, and is transcribed below.

In Columbia County, not too far from Danville, there is a place named Buckhorn. This village was founded in the early part of the 1800s, to house miners who worked in the iron mines surrounding the community at that time. This is not nearly as interesting, however, as the source of the name Buckhorn, It is written that before any settlement had been made in this area, even before any white men began to trade with the Indians, the antlers of a deer fastened between the forked branches of a white-oak sapling, marked the course of a trail from the village of Catawissa toward Williamsport. The tree with the horns on it stood on the edge of a swamp, about three miles from Catawissa. When it became necessary for the pioneers in the Fishing Creek Valley and North Mountain to often seek shelter from Indian raids, they broke a trail through to the forts along the Susquehanna.

This trail crossed the Indian trail near the marker and the Buckhorn tree became an assurance to many a weary traveler of his nearness to the forts and safety. Other way-marks grew dim and disappeared, but the sapling with the deer horns on it grew and grew until the antlers were surrounded by the plant itself, locking them in a vice-like embrace. It was finally completely concealed within the tree by the widening circles of the white-oaks yearly growth and the story of the Bucks horn was received more and more with questioning belief. Finally, no one believed the tale at all. Then Mother Nature herself caused an ironic twist. A bird, long of bill and seeking a home, pecked an opening to the hollow interior of the tree.

The antlers were discovered, and the story’s truth became known throughout the area. To write a finis to the tale of the buck’s horns, the antlers were removed from the tree and a part of them taken to be preserved in a museum at Allentown. The tree was located opposite the place where a man named Vaniah Rees built the first structure in the village. The building was a hotel and received the occupants of a stage line, which ran from Bloom to Muncy.

Incidentally, it was Vaniah Rees who bought the ground and later laid out the town of Buckhorn. In 1832, 12 years after he erected his first hotel, Rees built another on the site. He built a third one and finally, in 1836, he opened the first store. Before he was done, he had put up 12 houses. Hugh Allen was Buckhorns first postmaster.

Noah Prentiss carried the mail from Bloom once a week until Israel Bittler, in 1850, was commissioned to carry it twice each week. In 1868 a tri-weekly mail service was begun by Jacob Crawford, but it wasn’t until 1888 that daily mail was established. In 1888 it was reported that the village comprised a number of houses. It had two stores. a hotel, a carriage shop, a school, and two churches. Buckhorn, contrary to Danville and Bloomsburg, was a much larger town in the late 1800s than it is now, but it possesses an equally romantic history.

Bits of History Column Danville News (Danville, Pennsylvania) August 21, 1961 ·Page 5 (Edited)