Windber was established in 1897 as a company town for nearby coal mines in the vicinity of Johnstown. The establishment was overseen by coal barons Charles and Edward Julius Berwind, owners of the Berwind Corporation; the name "Windber" simply switches the order of the two syllables in the family name "Berwind".[3] The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company imported workers from eastern and southern Europe and exploited ethnic divisions in the area (which had been settled by Germans and Irish in the 19th century).
On Good Friday 1922 during the UMW General coal strike, coal miners walked out of the mines in Windber and several nearby locations in Somerset County, attempting to force the mine owners to recognize their United Mine Workers union, as well as accurately weigh the coal they mined.[4][5]
Mass meeting of more than 3,000 striking coal miners held near Windber, PA in September 1922
The company employed legal tactics (the United States Supreme Court decided two lawsuits) as well as strike-breakers, but the miners received considerable favorable national publicity and local support and held out until the end of the following summer.[5][4] However, the UMW successfully organized the mines during 1933, after the Great Depression led to the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Vintage Electric Streetcar Company, popularly called the "trolley graveyard", is located in Windber. The private scrapyard houses a number of PCC streetcars and other transit equipment from systems like the MBTA Green Line, which are sold for reuse or scrapped for parts.[6]
As of the census[10] of 2000, there were 4,395 people, 2,019 households, and 1,185 families residing in the borough.
The population density was 2,118.8 people per square mile (818.1 people/km2). There were 2,177 housing units at an average density of 1,049.5 per square mile (405.2/km2).
There were 2,019 households, out of which 25.1% had children under the age of eighteen living with them; 43.3% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.3% were non-families. 38.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 22.6% had someone living alone who was sixty-five years of age or older.
The average household size was 2.16 and the average family size was 2.89.
In the borough the population was spread out, with 21.3% under the age of eighteen, 6.7% from eighteen to twenty-four, 25.3% from twenty-five to forty-four, 22.1% from forty-five to sixty-four, and 24.6% who were sixty-five years of age or older. The median age was forty-three years.
For every one hundred females, there were 85.4 males. For every one hundred females who were aged eighteen or older, there were 81.9 males.
The median income for a household in the borough was $23,261, and the median income for a family was $31,860. Males had a median income of $24,861 compared with that of $18,886 for females.
Roughly 11.9% of families and 11.1% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 13.5% of those who were under the age of eighteen and 8.8% of those who were aged sixty-five or older.
The nearby Silver Drive-In first opened in 1962.[12] While other such facilities in the area have closed over the course of years, the Silver survived through public outcry over proposals to close and demolish it, making a comeback in 2005.[13][14][15] It is now the only drive-in theater in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania region.
