This borough stretches along the south bank of the Schuylkill River, and maintains its own fire department, but shares its zip code, telephone exchanges and school district with the city of Pottsville.

[4] Heavily forested until the mid-1870s, the land which became the community of Palo Alto was the site of a log cabin and wooden blacksmith's shanty earlier in the nineteenth century.

In response, the neighboring land was surveyed and plotted out by John G. Hewes between late 1844 and early 1845 to create the town of Palo Alto.

[5] As more boatmen and other laborers arrived to work on the canal and railroad, mining companies continued to increase their hiring of miners to work deep underground in their anthracite coal collieries that were operating across Schuylkill County, which sparked the opening of stores and other businesses to serve the town's growing population.

[6] Officially incorporated as a borough in 1854, Palo Alto may have been given its name because of "very high timber [that] grew on the mountain above it," according to historians.

[6] Between 1854 and 1855, William Harris erected and began operating a large rolling mill plant, which produced railroad iron.

The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, which was one of the company's major customers, operated a roundhouse and repair facility roughly a mile west of both rolling mills.

[6] In 1866, community leaders designed and built a Methodist Episcopal church on Union Street at a cost of thirteen hundred dollars.