Sandy Lake Borough Hall is located at 3271 South Main Street, Sandy Lake PA 16145.
Phone: 724‑376‑2676.
Beginnings [1]
The borough of Sandy Lake is situated at the east end and partly encircling the lake of that name. At the other end of the same lake is Stoneboro, and the two towns really lie almost side by side, although Stoneboro is in Lake township and Sandy Lake in the township of the same name. The towns have long been rivals, as is usually true in cases of such proximity. Sandy Lake has the advantages of greater age, but it has lacked some of the industrial activity of coal mining that has been at the foundation of Stoneboro's growth. The towns were about of equal population in 1870, but Stoneboro was the larger in 1880 and while it has since then held about its own, Sandy Lake has declined a little and at the last census had a little less than seven hundred people.
Sandy Lake was originally called Brownsville, being named in honor of its founder, Thomas J. Brown, who laid out the village in 1849 on land that had been settled by his father Alexander Brown in 1800. Sandy Creek was more important as a source of power than the lake, and perhaps for this reason the little village grew up near that stream instead of immediately on the shores of the lake. The grist mill which Alexander Brown built about 1820 was the first important enterprise of the vicinity. Another settler was Robert Dunn, who put up a blacksmith shop in 1825. Before the town was platted a considerable business enterprise was concentrated in this neighborhood, there being a sawmill, a fulling, woolen and oil mill, grist mill, a wagon shop, a physician or two, a store and a tavern, and other features of village life.
The petition for incorporation was granted August 20, 1859. A post office had been established at this point in 1833, under the name of Brownsville, but because of the Brownsville in Fayette County confusion arose in the distribution of mails, and in November, 1868, the Brownsville in Mercer county was officially changed to Sandy Lake.