In the 1877 Shamokin Uprising, railroad workers and miners angered by cuts in wages joined what developed as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, with strikes conducted in several major industrial cities in Pennsylvania, as well as cities in the Northeast and to the west through Missouri.
At the turn of the century, resident William A. Conway wrote Murder at Hickory Ridge (1905) as a "dime novel, hoping to cash in on their popularity.