07/10/2025
LP neighborhood deserves to be noted and honored
By Jay Purdy
Hodges Heights.
This neighborhood on Conway Road in southeastern Lower Paxton Township could be the most mentioned neighborhood at township supervisor meetings over the last 50 years.
Itโs not because of problems Hodges Heights has caused, but because of the challenges it has faced from its start in the 1950s.
In a nutshell, after World War II, Elmo Hodge of Edgemont, just outside of Harrisburg, bought a 137-acre farm in Lower Paxton. About 10 years later, when he was ready to sell the property to potential residential developers, he said he wanted to build the first house on the land.
But he was told he couldnโt because he was black and the houses were going to be for whites only.
No deal.
Hodge kept the property and opened the lots up to anybody who wanted to build a home there. Many of the new homeowners were upwardly mobile blacks from the Harrisburg area.
It was historically unique in Dauphin Countyโthe first such new residential development to invite residents of all races.
It was a great place to live and to grow up.
You want to buy a house there today? Youโd better be able to lay out around $250,000.
But Hodges Heights faces two challenges.
The first is the landfill/dump on the south side of Conway Road opposite the housing. I have yet to talk with an older resident of the township who can tell me when the dumping started. Some say it didnโt begin until after Hodges Heights development began. Reportedly, when the wind was right, an odor of rot drifted through the neighborhood.
The landfill closed in the 1970s and was covered with earth. It was a time when the science of sealing landfills was in its infancy.
Methane gas began seeping into Hodges Heights homes. The township installed equipment to dissipate gas buildup, and the landfill site is fenced in. A program to install methane detectors in homes began.
Around that same time, Lower Paxton opened a program to recycle yard waste like leaves, brush and woody clippings โฆ an enterprise that has grown in popularity through the years. Its location โ Conway Road adjacent to the old landfill.
Nearby residents regularly complain about the level of sound coming from the grinding process and the trucks that flow in an out of the facility.
The township has put up earthen berms to reduce the sound and officials visit to measure the level of decibels to see if they exceed the limit.
Residents assert that exceeding the limit isnโt so much the problem as the din of hours of grinding, and the big trucks that make deliveries.
The truck flow presents an additional danger. As the accompanying photographs show, Thereโs barely any walking area along either side of Conway Road.
This is especially a concern because itโs the only way for children or families to walk to the small Hodges Heights Park between Conway and the landfill site.
These are problems that developed over decades without being effectively addressed by Lower Paxton Township.
Band-Aid solutions are applied and the can kicked down the road again.
With all its other challenges the inexperienced Board of Supervisors faces, one canโt point at the current panel and claim itโs their fault. In fact, Supervisor Pamela Thompson has sponsored a new initiative to reduce the sound from the recycling center.
As with the hiring of a new township manager, any attempt to comprehensively address the quality of life problems at Hodges Heights will be in the hands of the Board of Supervisors to be elected in November.
Will it be more bandages or a definitive solution?
Yard waste at the township facility includes materials from other area municipalities. Rather than try to maintain a yard waste site in what is becoming an increasingly residential portion of Lower Paxton, how about working with surrounding municipalities to create an acceptable "regional" facility, one with effective noise suppression from the start and the ability to handle truck traffic?
A now-deceased lifelong resident of Lower Paxton once told me about, as a child, seeing Ku Klux Klan members parading across a bridge over Paxton Creek. Thatโs not far from where Hodges Heights is today.
That the Klan was in Lower Paxton is a point of history that must be noted but not honored. In contrast, Elmo Hodge and his Hodges Heights are a unique breakthrough in the progress of Lower Paxton Township that deserve not only to be noted, but to be honored โฆ a point of pride.
Time for the township to make it so.
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โ Jay Purdy, former Lower Paxton Township supervisor and local historian
LEARN MORE: For a look at the history of Hodges Heights, check out an article published by TheBurg in 2014, https://tinyurl.com/2a8v6223.
NOTE: This is an opinion piece that does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Linglestown Gazette, publisher Bill Bostic, or anyone else affiliated with the Gazette's page.
