Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Burnside, PA

Burnside is a borough in southwestern Clearfield County, strung along the West Branch Susquehanna River and bordered by Burnside Township on the north, east, and south and by Indiana County on the west.

Burnside was incorporated as a borough on October 5, 1874, and its post office had opened decades earlier, in 1838.

Burnside thrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s on lumber — logging, rafting, and sawmills along the river — alongside neighboring river towns like Mahaffey, Lumber City, and Curwensville.

Timber rafts from Burnside were floated far down the Susquehanna, and local raft pilot Harry Conner made the now-legendary trek by water all the way to Marietta, Pennsylvania.

The Conner family of Burnside started a soda factory in the borough in 1898, and the family name still survives locally in Burnside's Conner Park.

The nearby George Atchison home served as a stop on the Underground Railroad for enslaved people escaping north to Canada in the years before the Civil War.

Burnside's population has shrunk steadily from 283 people in 102 households in 2000, to 234 in 2010, and just 188 at the 2020 census.

Burnside covers 1.73 square miles, about 3 percent of it water where the West Branch Susquehanna River flows past, and sits about 1,340 feet above sea level.

U.S. Route 219 runs straight through Burnside, leading 37 miles north to DuBois and 26 miles south to Ebensburg.

The Harmony Area School District operates all of its schools — elementary, middle, and high school — from a single campus in surrounding Burnside Township, one of the smallest school operations in Clearfield County.