Hollidaysburg has the air of a new clearing, and looks so unfinished that one might suppose it to have been built within a year.  Its site is good, rising gradually from the basin to a pleasant elevation.  Many substantial buildings are going up, and it is evident that rapid increase is the destiny of the town.  The Allegheny Portage Railroad commences here, and leads by a gently rising grade four miles from the foot of the mountain, whither the cars are drawn by horses.  (Philip Nicklin, 1835)

            Hollidaysburg was ideally situated to become a booming canal town – and it did.  Foundries and iron furnaces had been established in the village prior to the arrival of the canal and APRR.  The canal basin became a focus of industrial development, and a number of hotels and support facilities grew up around it, including depots, machine shops, boat building yards, carpenter and blacksmith shops, turnrounds, a coal house, weigh shed, locomotive shed and repair shops.

            The canal basin was actually two basins connected by a lock.  In the late 19^th century, the basin was filled and became a railyard associated with the Hollidaysburg Car Shop.  In 2001, the Canal Basin Park and Reiser House Visitor Center opened on the site of the basin.

            When the Pennsylvania Railroad selected nearby Altoona as the site of its extensive shop and yard complex, Hollidaysburg assumed a new role.  It had been named the county seat of Blair County in 1848, insuring that it would continue to have an important position in the growth of the county.  Hollidaysburg now has a large historic district of canal-era and late 19^th century houses and commercial buildings that have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.