Winterstown, PA

Winterstown is a York County borough in the York–Hanover metropolitan area, with 609 residents in the 2020 census. North Hopewell–Winterstown Elementary sits on the site of a 1911 schoolhouse, while the borough’s roads lead through the wooded and farmed country southeast of York. The place remains one of York County’s smaller boroughs by population but covers a relatively broad footprint. Its older houses, former stores, and village streets preserve a strong sense of its nineteenth-century plan.

Townsend Winters bought 400 acres here around 1830, cleared the timber, and planted an apple orchard. The first settlement was called Apple Grove, a name that fit the orchard; it became Winterstown when the community was surveyed and officially incorporated on January 2, 1871. By the early twentieth century, stores, a hotel, blacksmith shops, a post office, and a one-room schoolhouse lined the village. The last general store closed in 1968, but the old school site, firehouse, and homes keep the outline visible. Winterstown is a Pennsylvania borough that began with an orchard and grew into a small crossroads.