Heilwood

History

In 1850, a portion of Wheatfield Township (located in Indiana County, Pennsylvania) was sectioned off to create Pine Township, named for its extensive pine forests. Here, J. M. Guthrie established a logging settlement consisting of five frame houses, a store room, stables, a blacksmith shop, and several other outbuildings in the 1880s. Over time, the area came to be known as Possum Glory—Edward R. Sutton, an employee of Guthrie's, is credited with coining the name due to the preponderance of possums in the area. By 1894, the lumber business had diminished significantly; Guthrie was facing difficult financial times and his lands were sold at a sheriff's sale in June 1896 to J. M. Stewart of Indiana, Pennsylvania. The area was underlaid with coal and four years later Stewart would sell to Philadelphia industrialist John Heisley Weaver, founder of J. H. Weaver & Company, Handlers of Coal and Coke. Weaver accumulated considerable holdings in Pine, Green, and Cherryhill Townships and by 1904 was ready to begin building a “model town” to support his expanding mining operations nearby, which he named “Heilwood,” and was probably a combination of his nickname (“Heil”) and the name of his first coal mine in Kingwood (Preston County), West Virginia (“Heisleywood”). This concept involved building, from the ground up, a fully-functioning modern town with amenities typical for the time, such as a school, church, boarding house, company store, policing, hotel, and a hospital. Designed to directly support mining, it would only operate as long as the mine remained viable. In theory, the company provided construction capital and filled some roles of a local government, such as maintaining public spaces and paying the salary of certain school officials, while workers and their…

Geography

Heilwood is located at (40.637259, -78.882627). According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all land.

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Purchase Line JSHS
  High · Commodore · 395 students · 12.7:1 ratio
• Penns Manor Area JSHS
  High · Clymer · 391 students · 12.6:1 ratio
• Purchase Line El Sch
  Elementary · Commodore · 386 students · 13.3:1 ratio
• Penns Manor Area El Sch
  Elementary · Clymer · 332 students · 11.9:1 ratio