Hensingersville, Pennsylvania

Hensingersville, also known as New Hensingersville, is an unincorporated community located mostly in southwestern Lower Macungie Township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. It also extends into Longswamp Township in Berks Township near the intersections of Pennsylvania Route 201, Pennsylvania Route 3001 (Hensingersville Road), Chestnut Road, and Reservoir Hill Road.

The community is located just south of the Alburtis and Lock Ridge Park at the confluence of the west and east branches of Swabia Creek. It is part of the Lehigh Valley, which has a population of 861,899 and was the 68th-most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. as of the 2020 census.

History

19th century

In 1846, a hotel was built by Peter Hensinger and local residents named the area Hensingersville. A post office was opened in Hensingersville 12 years later, in 1858. That same year, the Philadelphia and Reading Railway established a train stop several miles north in present-day Alburtis, and the post office was transferred to Alburtis.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] A ghost named Bucky is alleged to haunt the Old Hensingersville Hotel.^[5] Hensingersville Dam is located south of Hensingersville, off Reservoir Hill Road.

20th century

In 1936, Hensingersville Dam was built on the east branch of Swabia Creek in the Lehigh River watershed. The dam is owned by the Alburtis Borough Authority and used for recreation purposes. The dam is earth and concrete, 18-feet high and 135-feet long. Its capacity is 51 acre-feet (63,000 m³). Normal storage is 3 acre-feet (3,700 m³) with a surface area of 1 acre (4,000 m²). It drains an area of 0.4 square miles (1,000,000 m²). The dam's latitude and longitude are 40.4877, -75.5823.

Geography

The community's elevation is 489 feet. Hensingersville appears on the East Greenville USGS survey as a populated place. It is split between the Alburtis ZIP Code of 18011 and the Macungie Zip Code of 18062.

Education

Hensingersville is served by East Penn School District. Emmaus High School in Emmaus serves grades nine through twelve. Eyer Middle School and Lower Macungie Middle School, both in Macungie, serve grades six through eight.

References

^ "About the Borough of Alburtis". Pennsylvania Borough News. Borough of Alburtis. March 2002. Retrieved August 27, 2011. About a mile to the south [of Alburtis] was the hamlet of Hensingersville, having derived its name from Peter Hensinger, who built this area's original hotel in 1846. Additional buildings and several businesses appeared and a post office was established. The opening of the railroad halted their growth, while building activity flourished in the Alburtis area. On February 27, 1868 the post office was transferred from Hensingersville to Alburtis.
^ Miller, Benjamin LeRoy (1941). "Toponymy" (PDF). Geology of Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania. 4. Vol. 1. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Geological Survey. p. 73. "Hensingersville", Lower Macungie Township; for Peter Hensinger, who built a hotel there in 1846. Also written Hensenger.
^ Forte, Jim. "Post Offices, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania". postalhistory.com. Retrieved August 27, 2011. Hensingersville (1858-1868)
^ "History of Lower Macungie Township". lowermac.com. Lower Macungie Township. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved August 27, 2011. For generations most residents of Lower Macungie Township lived on a farm. There were a few concentrations of population where schools, stores, hotels, and later automobile service stations were located the largest of which was Wescosville. Others includes East Texas, the eastern part of Macungie, Weilersville. and Hensingersville. Wescosville had a number of small businesses, and a major printing business developed in East Texas after the 1940s. The most industrialized communities in the township were Alburtis and Lock Ridge, which had iron furnaces and textile mills. They became the Borough of Alburtis in 1913.
^ Hauck, Dennis William (2002). Haunted places: the national directory : ghostly abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York, NY: Penguin. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-14-200234-6. Retrieved August 27, 2011. "Old Hensingersville Hotel". A ghost nicknamed Bucky haunts this two-hundred-year-old building. The unidentified presence seems to be centered in the kitchen of the house, although footsteps and other manifestations occur near the bar and in upstairs bedrooms. (The former hotel is now a private residence on the corner of Mountain Rd. and Hensingersville Rd., just outside Alburtis.)