Congo is a village in Douglass Township, Montgomery County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. Congo is located at the intersection of Hoffmansville Road and Congo Road, northeast of

Boyertown Boyertown (Pennsylvania Dutch: ) is a borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 4,264 at the 2020 census. History A post office called Boyertown has been in operation since 1828. The community was named for its ...

. It is drained by the Swamp Creek into the

Perkiomen Creek Perkiomen Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Schuylkill River in Berks, Lehigh, and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania.Gertler ...

and uses the Barto ZIP Code of 19504.

Name origin

The village was named Cedarville until the 1880s, when the US Post Office decided to rename it due to the existence of at least three other Pennsylvania post offices with "cedar" in their names. The

Congo Basin The Congo Basin () is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It contains some of the larg ...

was in the news at the time due to conflicting European claims and measures to settle them. While the Congo post office closed around 1925, the name has remained with the community ever since.Douglass Township Bicentennial Historical Committee. "A History of Douglass Township: 1700 to 1976." 1976, p. 32.

References

Unincorporated communities in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania {{MontgomeryCountyPA-geo-stub