Sunbury

History

Shamokin and Fort Augusta

The first known settlers at the site of Sunbury were likely Shawnee migrants. A large population of Delaware Indians was also forcibly resettled there in the early 18th century after they lost rights to their land in the Walking Purchase. Canassatego of the Six Nations, enforcing the Walking Purchase on behalf of George Thomas, Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania, ordered the Delaware Indians to relocate to two places on the Susquehanna River, one of which was present-day Sunbury.

From 1727 to 1756, the village—known as Shamokin, not to be confused with the present-day city of Shamokin about 13 miles (21 km) to the east—was one of the largest and most influential Indian settlements in Pennsylvania. In 1745, Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd described the village as occupying both banks of the river and an island, and reported that it housed 300 Indians, about half of them Delawares and the remainder Senecas and Tutelos. The Oneida chief Shikellamy, who oversaw the region's tribes on behalf of the Six Nations, lived at Shamokin from about 1728 until his death there in 1748.

In 1754, much of the land west of the Susquehanna was transferred from the Six Nations to Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress. Shamokin, however, was not sold; the Six Nations reserved it "to settle such of our Nations as shall come to us from the Ohio or any others who shall deserve to be in our Alliance." According to Weslager, "the Pennsylvania authorities had no opposition to the Six Nations reserving Wyoming and Shamokin from the sale, since friendly Delawares, including Teedyuskung (also known as Teedyuscung) and his people living in those settlements—and any other Indians who might be placed there—constituted a buffer against Connecticut."

The French and Indian War brought fighting to much of the region. The Delaware residents of Shamokin remained neutral early in the war, in part because a drought and unseasonable frost in 1755 had left them without provisions. After the Gnadenhütten massacre in 1755, however, the Delawares at Shamokin joined the war against Pennsylvania and the English, and the village was abandoned in May 1756. The Province of Pennsylvania built Fort Augusta on the site of the abandoned village in 1756–1757, and the fort became the key frontier outpost of the region. The Bloody Spring, where a soldier from the fort's garrison is said to have been killed during the war, is a historic site from the era. During the American Revolutionary War, Fort Augusta served in 1779 as a rendezvous point for troops of the Sullivan Expedition against the Iroquois.

Founding and growth

Northumberland County was created on March 21, 1772, from parts of Lancaster, Cumberland, Berks, Bedford, and Northampton counties. The town of Sunbury was laid out as the county seat later that year by Pennsylvania surveyor general John Lukens, assisted by William Maclay, and the present-day city identifies 1772 as the date of its establishment. It was named after Sunbury-on-Thames in England, which was then in the county of Middlesex. Sunbury was incorporated as a borough on March 24, 1797, and as a city on December 29, 1920.

Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart and Salieri, lived in Sunbury from 1811 to 1818, working as a teacher, distiller, and merchant.

During the 19th century, Sunbury grew as a transportation and industrial center. The Danville and Pottsville Railroad, a horse-powered line opened between Sunbury and Paxinos in 1835, brought anthracite coal to the riverfront, where it was loaded onto canal boats for shipment to Philadelphia and Baltimore. Later in the century the city became a busy railroad junction, and its industries came to include textiles, metal products, and building materials.

Edison and the first three-wire electric station

In 1883, Thomas Edison's company installed the world's first successful three-wire central station for incandescent electric lighting in Sunbury. On July 4, 1883, the City Hotel became the first building illuminated by the new system. The hotel kept the City Hotel name for decades; it was renamed the Edison Hotel in July 1922, when Edison returned to Sunbury for the city's 150th anniversary celebration.

Flooding and the floodwall

An extensive floodwall protection system was designed and built along the city's riverfront by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1951, and additional height was added to the wall in 2003. The system has protected the city from more than a dozen major flood events. In June 1972, floodwaters from Hurricane Agnes crested at 35.8 feet (10.9 m) at Sunbury, two feet higher than the record crest of 1936, but the wall held back the water, and residents wrote messages of gratitude on it afterward.

Historic sites

Several sites in Sunbury are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), including the Sunbury Historic District, which encompasses much of the older city between Arch and Chestnut streets.

Two other NRHP-listed sites carry Sunbury addresses but stand outside the city limits: the Keefer Station Covered Bridge (1888), which crosses Shamokin Creek northeast of the city, and the Caspar Snyder House (1798) in Lower Augusta Township.

Other notable historic buildings in the city include the Hotel Edison (built in 1871 as the City Hotel and renamed for Thomas Edison in 1922) and the Maclay–Wolverton House (1773).

Pennsylvania state historical markers

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has placed more than a dozen state historical markers in and around Sunbury commemorating the city's colonial, Revolutionary, industrial, and cultural history. They include markers for:

Geography

Sunbury is at 40°51′50″N 76°47′21″W (40.863894, −76.789174), on the east bank of the Susquehanna River at the point where the river's North and West branches converge. The city is about 50 miles (80 km) north of Harrisburg.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.11 square miles (5.5 km2), of which 2.01 square miles (5.2 km2) is land and 0.10 square miles (0.26 km2) (4.8%) is water.

Demographics

Sunbury's population peaked at 15,721 in the 1920 census and has declined in most decades since. The city is the principal city of the Sunbury micropolitan statistical area, which consists of Northumberland County. The Office of Management and Budget groups the Sunbury area with the Bloomsburg–Berwick metropolitan area and the Lewisburg (Union County) and Selinsgrove (Snyder County) micropolitan areas as the Bloomsburg–Berwick–Sunbury combined statistical area.

2020 census

As of the 2020 census, Sunbury had a population of 9,719. The median age was 39.1 years; 23.0% of residents were under the age of 18 and 17.8% were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 91.8 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 88.8 males age 18 and over. All of the city's residents lived in areas classified as urban.

There were 4,266 households, of which 26.9% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 30.1% were married-couple households, 23.6% had a male householder with no spouse or partner present, and 34.7% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. About 38.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. There were 4,790 housing units, of which 10.9% were vacant; the homeowner vacancy rate was 2.6% and the rental vacancy rate was 7.1%.

Earlier censuses

As of the 2010 census, there were 9,905 people residing in the city. At the 2000 census, the city's 10,610 residents were 95.26% White, 1.29% African American, 0.26% Asian, 1.91% from other races, and 1.11% from two or more races; Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 3.09% of the population, and the median age was 37 years.

Income and poverty

According to American Community Survey estimates for 2017–2021, the median household income in Sunbury was $37,851 and the mean household income was $52,975. About 19.8% of the population was below the poverty line.

Economy

Weis Markets, a supermarket chain operating in seven states, was founded in Sunbury in 1912 by brothers Harry and Sigmund Weis and remains headquartered in the city.

Great Coasters International, a designer and builder of wooden roller coasters for parks around the world, is headquartered on State Route 890 just outside the city, with a Sunbury address.

Several family businesses in the city date to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Zimmerman Motors on Market Street began making horse-drawn carriages in 1889 and now sells automobiles, and the Sunbury Motor Company on North Fourth Street has operated since 1915. The Squeeze-In, a five-stool hot dog stand on Market Street, has been serving hot dogs since 1945 and celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2025.

Arts and culture

The Degenstein Community Library, at 40 South Fifth Street, was founded in 1937 as the Sunbury Public Library; its current building, funded largely by a gift from local businessman Charles B. Degenstein, opened in 2002. The library provides books, internet access, educational classes, summer reading, and adult and youth programs.

The Northumberland County Historical Society, based at the Fort Augusta site on North Front Street, maintains the Charlotte Darrah Walter Genealogical Library, which holds local history material and records of early families from Northumberland and surrounding counties. Its permanent exhibits cover the site in prehistoric times, the Moravian mission and blacksmith shop at Shamokin, and Fort Augusta during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.

Sunbury's Revitalization, Inc. (SRI), a downtown revitalization organization, promotes the city under the "Think Sunbury" brand and organizes the annual Sunbury River Festival, held the third weekend of August, with music, vendors, food, and art celebrating the city's riverfront location. In June 2026, marking its 40th anniversary, SRI unveiled an illuminated "Think Sunbury" sign at the western end of Cameron Park as a landmark of its revitalization efforts.

In popular culture

In "Nixon vs. Kennedy", a first-season episode of the AMC drama Mad Men, a train carrying the casket of Pvt. Dick Whitman, reportedly killed in the Korean War, arrives in Sunbury, where it is met by Whitman's family. The escort officer, Lt. Don Draper, is in fact Dick Whitman, who has switched identities with the real Draper; his younger half-brother Adam recognizes him and chases the departing train.

Parks and recreation

Sunbury Riverfront Park stretches along the Susquehanna between Race Street and the Route 61 bridge. The park includes a 1-mile (1.6 km) paved walking trail along the historic floodwall, the Sunbury Amphitheater, a boat dock, and a fishing pier.

The Adam T. Bower Memorial Dam, an inflatable fabric-tube dam across the Susquehanna, creates the 3,000-acre (12 km2) Lake Augusta for boating and other recreation; it is inflated in the late spring and deflated in the fall. The Marina Section of Shikellamy State Park occupies the tip of Packers Island at the confluence of the river's branches opposite the city, with a marina, boat launches, picnic areas, and paved paths. In June 2025, the state opened a $5.3 million naturalistic fish passage—a 900-foot (270 m) boulder-lined channel around the western end of the dam—allowing shad, river herring, eels, and other migratory fish to bypass the dam.

The city also offers baseball fields, a skating park, tennis courts, playgrounds, a community pool, and a small park next to the county courthouse downtown.

Government

Sunbury is governed by a mayor and a four-member city council; the mayor shares the authority and duties of running the city with the council and directly supervises the police department. A city treasurer and controller are elected independently to four-year terms. The mayor is Joshua A. Brosious, a Republican first elected in November 2021 and re-elected in November 2025.

As the seat of Northumberland County, Sunbury is home to the Northumberland County Courthouse and county government offices.

Education

Sunbury is served by the Shikellamy School District, which operates three elementary schools in the city—Chief Shikellamy, Grace S. Beck, and Oaklyn—along with Priestley Elementary School and Shikellamy Middle School in nearby Northumberland and Shikellamy High School in Sunbury.

Lackawanna College operates its Sunbury Center in the city, and Triangle Tech, a private technical trade school, has a Sunbury campus.

Media

Sunbury's daily newspaper is The Daily Item. The Sunbury Broadcasting Corporation, based in the city, operates the news/talk station WKOK (1070 AM), contemporary hit station WQKX (94.1 FM), and classic rock station Eagle 107. Other regional radio stations also serve the Sunbury area.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Sunbury is served by three state highways: PA 61, PA 147, and PA 405. PA 61 reaches its northern terminus in the city after crossing the Susquehanna from Shamokin Dam on the Veterans Memorial Bridge, which links Sunbury with US 11 / US 15 on the river's west bank. PA 147, which formerly ran the length of the city along Front Street, now passes through only the south end of Sunbury: when the route was relocated onto the newly opened northern section of the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway in 2022, its former alignment through the rest of the city and neighboring Northumberland was redesignated as part of PA 405.

Freight rail service in the city is provided by the Shamokin Valley Railroad, a short line owned by the SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority and operated by the North Shore Railroad Company.

Healthcare

Sunbury Community Hospital, the city's only hospital, was acquired by UPMC Susquehanna and operated as UPMC Sunbury until it closed in March 2020. The building remained vacant as of late 2024.

Notable people

Tim Boetsch, mixed martial artist and former UFC fighter

Betty Brice (1888–1935), silent film actress

William Clapham (1722–1763), colonial soldier who supervised the construction of Fort Augusta in 1756–1757

Charles M. Clement, Pennsylvania National Guard major general

Birdie Cree (1882–1942), Major League Baseball outfielder for the New York Highlanders (now the Yankees)

Herbert W. Cummings (1873–1956), member of the U.S. House of Representatives

Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838), librettist for Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; lived in Sunbury from 1811 to 1818

Charles L. Dering, Wisconsin lawyer and politician, born in Sunbury

Lewis Dewart (1780–1852), member of the U.S. House of Representatives

William Lewis Dewart (1821–1888), member of the U.S. House of Representatives

Euell Gibbons, outdoorsman and early health food advocate

John P. S. Gobin, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Civil War commander of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

I. Clinton Kline (1858–1947), member of the U.S. House of Representatives

Steve Kline, Major League Baseball pitcher