Kersey, PA

Kersey is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Fox Township, Elk County, at the headwaters of Little Toby Creek. The first permanent settlers reached this part of the county in 1810, and William Kersey built a gristmill or sawmill there soon afterward. The settlement began as Centreville and took the Kersey name from the mill builder. The 2020 census counted 797 residents. Pennsylvania Route 948 passes through the community, connecting it with Route 255 to the east and U.S. 219 toward Ridgway, the county seat.

The creek and the surrounding forest still set the local scale. Early residents found coal, lime, and iron ore nearby; Nathaniel Hyatt opened a coal mine in 1847, and Kersey Coal Company followed in 1866. Those industries have faded from the daily map, but the road through Kersey still serves as a practical link between rural Fox Township and Ridgway’s courthouse, shops, schools, and county offices. Kersey is a small Elk County crossroads with a mill-town beginning, a resource-extraction past, and a creek that keeps the community tied to the land.