Windows & doors in Jonestown, PA

Small, old, and easy to drive past

Jonestown goes back further than its current name suggests. The area was settled in 1761 under the name Williamsburg, and wasn't incorporated as its own borough until 1870, over a century later. That's a long stretch of history for a town most drivers only see from the highway. Today it's still small by any measure, just 0.6 square miles, the smallest footprint of any Lebanon County town on our list, with a population of a little over 1,600 people.

Most people who've heard of Jonestown know it from the highway. It sits near Exit 90 on I-81, about two miles south of where the interstate crosses Swatara Creek, close to Swatara State Park and the Swatara Creek recreation area. We don't have a landmark or a historic district to point to here the way we do in Cornwall or Annville, and we'd rather say that plainly than dress up a small borough as something it isn't. It's a quiet town near an interstate exit, with modest, older homes and none of the marketing hooks its neighbors have, and the work we do here tends to match that: straightforward window and door jobs, without a sales pitch attached.

From Williamsburg to Jonestown

The name change itself isn't something we're going to guess at here. The area was first settled in 1761 under the name Williamsburg, and by the time it incorporated as its own borough in 1870, the name Jonestown was already the one in use. Exactly when and why that change happened isn't spelled out in the historical record we've found, and we'd rather tell you that plainly than invent a tidy story to fill the gap. What's clear is that the name has stuck for well over a century and a half, long enough that most residents today have never heard it called anything else.

Close to Swatara Creek and the state park

Jonestown sits close to Swatara Creek and the recreation land around it, including Swatara State Park a short drive away. That part of Lebanon County leans toward outdoor recreation rather than commerce, fishing, hiking, and camping along the creek corridor instead of shopping districts or dense development. It gives Jonestown a quieter, more rural feel than its size and interstate access might suggest, even with I-81 Exit 90 only about two miles north of the borough, close to where the interstate itself crosses the creek. It's an unusual combination for a town this small: genuinely easy highway access paired with a genuinely quiet setting, rather than the built-up commercial strip that sometimes clusters around an interstate exit.

What that combination means in practice

For a homeowner, sitting this close to I-81 without much commercial development around the exit usually means fewer of the traffic and drainage complications that come with a busier interchange, while still having fast, direct highway access for anything that needs it, including us. For our own scheduling, Jonestown's interstate access actually works in a homeowner's favor: getting a crew and materials out to a small borough near a highway exit is often more straightforward than reaching an equally small but more rural spot down a series of township roads. The borough's small size also tends to mean fewer layers of permitting review than a larger municipality, though we still confirm current requirements with Jonestown directly rather than assume based on size alone.