Matson Insurance is partnering with Jefferson County History Center to offer exploreJeffersonpa.com readers a look in Jefferson County’s past. Today the history of Coolspring is being showcased.
(Pictured above: The General Store in Coolspring is a unique piece of history in Jefferson County. Photo courtesy Jonnsea Photo & Video via The PA Great Outdoors)
TRY A COOL SPRING ON A HOT SUMMER DAY!
When pioneers named Hickox, Hadden, Newcom, and McKinstry looked for a place to settle in the early 1820s, do you suppose it was the broad valley with abundant game and cool springs that attracted them to the community we call Coolspring today? It was there that numerous springs fed Little Sandy Creek and Big Run. And it was there that a little community formed and grew.
While Brookville, the county seat, was growing to the north and Punxsutawney was getting established to the south, families in Oliver Township were busy clearing the land. They built mills and planted fields and earned a living by farming, timbering, or hunting. Communities formed like Sprankle Mills, Oliveburg, and Markton, and by 1856 each had a post office. So did Cool Spring.
Never incorporated as a municipality, Coolspring had a post office by 1856 and by 1880 the entire township, Oliver, boasted a population of 1305 people. The 1878 Oliver Township Directory found in Caldwell’s Atlas lists the occupations of the people living there then: a shoemaker, several millers, a miner, sawyers, a carpenter, a tanner, the postmaster, a lumberman, the justice of the peace, a blacksmith, a minister, a merchant, and many farmers.
By 1917 when McKnight wrote his history of the county, the original name, Cool Spring, had been compounded to Coolspring by virtue of federal legislation, and the population of the entire township had increased from 977 in 1860 to 1417 fifty years later. The population in 2000 was 1129.
Coolspring is the home of the Coolspring Power Museum where a large collection of gasoline-powered engines is on display. Twenty buildings and sheds house the largest, mechanically most interesting, and historically significant collection of historic internal combustion stationary gas engines in the United States. Volunteers will be there several times during the summer months to operate and talk about those engines.
Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.
Throwback Thursday is brought to you by Matson Insurance in Brookville.
Submitted by the Jefferson County History Center.
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