Summerhill, PA

Summerhill is a borough in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountains where the North Branch of the Little Conemaugh River meets Laurel Run. The 2020 census counted 479 residents. The first local settlers named in the town's history are Thomas and Barbara Croyle, who arrived with their family in 1794. Their stone homestead still stands, and the family later built Croyle's Mill and a dam on the Little Conemaugh to power it. The borough's later growth followed the Allegheny Portage Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad.

Summerhill's present-day connections remain tied to the same valley. U.S. Route 219 runs through the northwest edge, with access from Pennsylvania Route 53, while Forest Hills School District serves the borough as part of a wider Cambria County district. The Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site preserves the larger engineering story of the first railroad across the Alleghenies, the route that joined Pennsylvania's canal system. Summerhill is a small mountain borough, but its local scoop is unusually legible: a stone homestead, a water-powered mill, two river branches, and old transportation corridors all point to the same narrow valley.