Variously known as Neidigtown, Maytown, Poverty Point, and Fairview, the village at the mouth of the Condoguinet got its final name in 1852 with the establishment there of a post office.1 There being another Maytown, in Lancaster County plus a Fairview in Erie County, and "Poverty Point" tending to be an auslander's slur, "West" was added in reference to the view from the town of the Susquehanna and the East Shore.
It lay on a parcel of land first patented by John Harris, Ferry operator, that by 1802 was in the possession of the Wommels, who gave their name to another dorf, or village in Berks County. Daniel Wommel sold one hundred acres, including the promontory to the south towering over the Conodoguinet Creek, "Bunkers Hill," for L 875 to Abraham Neidig in 1815. Neidig and the May family laid out the village, which in the next thirty years grew to include about fifty houses and a population of about 250.2
Major growth began in 1833 when Gabriel Hiester and Norman Callender, both of Harrisburg, bought twenty-five acres and water rights at the mouth of the Conodoguinet. Here, where there is an eight foot drop in the Creek level, they constructed a 300-foot dam which provided water for a rolling mill that they built It was used to produce boilerplate and bar iron. The Pratts converted the facility into a nail factory which by 1850 was capitalized at nearly $43,000 and employed 125 men and annually produced over 29,000 kegs of nails valued at $117,583.3
The Heister Mill in 1844 became the property of Jacob Pratt & Son, who merged it with a forge in New Cumberland established by Jacob M. Haldeman in 1806, which he had purchased in 1828.
The town had a school by 1834 at Second and State Street. By 1838 the town had a minister, Frederick May and by 1845 a United Brethern Church and a general store.
James McCormick, Sr., bought the nail works in 1859 for $12,000, the Pratts having moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts. By 1860 it was turning out 60,000 kegs of nails. He turned to Charles Bailey to operate the plant. Eventually it employed 400 workers. Employment would have been larger had not a county inventor, Daniel Drawbaugh, designed improvements for some of McCormick's industry. The works ceased operations in 1890.
“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.