In-Home Drug Testing Union City, PA

Local Area Info: Union City, Pennsylvania

Union City is a borough in Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States 22 miles (35 km) southeast of Erie. In the twentieth century, there were three large chair factories, planing and grist mills, a powdered milk plant, and several furniture factories. The population was 3,320 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Erie Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The settlement of what was known as Miles Mills was established in 1800. William Miles had fought in the American Revolution and had been captured by the Iroquois and imprisoned at Quebec. He built a dam on the south branch of French Creek and erected a gristmill and sawmill. Until 1855, Miles Mills remained nothing more than a thin strand of small mills along this waterway. That year in anticipation of the coming of the railroad, town lots were plotted north and east of the creek. The Philadelphia and Erie Railroad entered the town in 1858 shortly before Edwin L. Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville. The impact on the young town serving as a rail head for oil was dramatic. In 1860, the same year that a second rail line, the Atlantic and Great Western, was built through Miles Mills, the town boasted three refineries and a barrel-making industry in addition to its saw and planing mills. Caught up in a booming oil economy, the exuberant citizens of Miles Mills incorporated themselves as the Borough of Union Mills in 1865. The diversion of the oil freight business to Corry after 1862 gradually extinguished the oil refinery business. What remained proved important for the town's future. Over time, barrel-making for oil bequeathed a wood products industry that has marked the town's economy to the present day.

By 1870, the town's population had risen to 1,500, and the sawmills which had been shut down as part of the scramble for oil riches, were back in business. Six saw mills and planing mills including those of Clark, and Hunter and Wade, appear in the 1870 census. Barrels continued to be a major wood product and their importance increased in 1870 with the founding of Wood and Johnson's factory. It employed 70 workers and produced an annual inventory valued at $165,000. The company advertised itself as the largest manufacturer of oil barrels in the country. Sensing a new start the town changed its name to Union City in 1871.