Hensingersville, Pennsylvania

Hensingersville, also known as New Hensingersville, is an unincorporated community located mostly in southwestern Lower Macungie Township, Lehigh County but also in Longswamp Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, near the intersections of Pennsylvania Route 2018 (Mountain Road), Pennsylvania Route 3001 (Hensingersville Road), Chestnut Road, and Reservoir Hill Road. It is located in the Lehigh Valley, just south of the Borough of Alburtis and Lock Ridge, at the confluence of the west and east branches of Swabia Creek. Its elevation is 489 feet. Hensingersville appears on the East Greenville U.S. Geological Survey Map and is designated by the USGS as a Populated Place. It is split between the Alburtis zip code of 18011 and the Macungie zip code of 18062.[1]

In 1846, a hotel was built by Peter Hensinger and local residents named the area Hensingersville. A post office was located at Hensingersville in 1858. However, that same year, the Philadelphia and Reading Railway was located several miles north in what later became Alburtis. After 10 years, the post office was transferred to Alburtis.[2][3][4][5] A ghost named Bucky is alleged to haunt the Old Hensingersville Hotel.[6]

Hensingersville Dam is located south of Hensingersville, off Reservoir Hill Road. 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 is used for recreation purposes. The dam is earth and concrete, 18 feet high by 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.

Nimrod Fish and Wildlife Association has its base on the north side of Mountain Road in the Berks portion of the village and meets at the Alburtis Rod & Gun Club. Wildlands Conservancy has a refuge on the opposite side of the road along the north slope of Macungie Mountain.

References
  1. http://www.hipcodes.com/18062/
  2. "About the Borough of Alburtis". Pennsylvania Borough News. Borough of Alburtis. March 2002. Retrieved 27 Aug 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.
  3. Miller, Benjamin LeRoy (1941). "Toponymy" (PDF). Geology of Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania. 4. 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.
  4. Forte, Jim. "Post Offices, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania". postalhistory.com. Retrieved 27 Aug 2011. Hensingersville (1858-1868)
  5. "History of Lower Macungie Township". lowermac.com. Lower Macungie Township. Archived from the original on 2011-08-11. Retrieved 27 Aug 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 these villages was Wescosville. Others were East Texas, East 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.
  6. 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 27 Aug 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.)
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