In colonial America, the river was used to float freight downriver on boats called "arcs". Shipments were placed on board in Birmingham, just east of Tyrone, to await water high enough to clear the rocky stream bed. Thus the Little Juniata was (and still is) listed as a commercially "navigable" river.
The Little Juniata River is a good spot for fly fishing; it holds a Class A population of wild brown trout and requires no stocking.
^U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National MapArchived 2012-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, accessed August 8, 2011