Mifflinburg Buggy Day brings food trucks, rides and blacksmithing downtown

The draw was not just the entertainment, but the way the day connected a modern street fair to the carriage-making industry that shaped Mifflinburg’s identity. Local tourism materials say the borough was known as Buggy Town in the late 1800s, when it had more than 80 documented buggy makers and produced about 5,000 buggies a year at its peak. That history still anchors the town’s image, and Buggy Day kept it visible with the sounds of blacksmithing, the motion of buggy rides and a downtown crowd built around a very specific piece of Union County heritage.

The Mifflinburg Buggy Museum sat at the center of that story. The museum says it preserves the only intact 19th-century carriage factory in the United States, on the original site of the Heiss Coach Works, and traces the borough’s buggy business back to George Swentzel, who built the first carriage in Mifflinburg in 1845. The museum also showcases horse-drawn buggies, carriages and sleighs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, making Buggy Day less of a generic summer festival than a live extension of what the museum already interprets year-round.

For the borough, the event also worked as a practical civic engine. The Susquehanna River Valley Visitors Bureau has described Buggy Day as one of Central Pennsylvania’s most unique summer traditions, and the museum’s own operating model depends on the kind of community turnout the street fair can deliver. Volunteers remain the backbone of the museum, guiding tours, staffing the admissions desk and helping plan events, while donations, admissions, store sales and special events help fund the operation.