The Riverton factory fire that ended the Hilton car

From wheelwrights to motor bodies

The Historical Society of Riverton identifies a surviving cabinet photograph as the Woolston Carriage Works, correcting an earlier identification as a lumberyard. Its reproduced 1919 Sanborn map labels C. T. Woolston’s wagon manufactory and separates the blacksmith, wheelwright, woodworking, painting and varnishing spaces. The building then housed Penn Motors, which built truck bodies and a short-lived Hilton automobile.

The June fire

The New Era of June 17, 1921, page 2 reported a midnight fire at the Penn Motors plant on Seventh Street near Main. Firefighters came from eight towns. The account says roofs on neighboring frame houses also caught fire, but crews saved the houses. It counted sixteen completed or nearly completed Penn trucks and two Hilton cars in the factory, as well as two customers’ cars. The reported loss was $35,000, covered by insurance.

Penn Motors’ president said he hoped to build a fireproof replacement within six weeks. That was a plan, not proof it was built. The society’s comparison with a 1925 Sanborn map instead shows four houses on the former factory site. A 1987 retrospective says the fire ended Hilton production; the inspected newspaper establishes the cars lost in the blaze, not the full corporate history.

Where was it?

The newspaper uses Seventh and Main; the society captions its 1919 map Seventh and Lippincott and also describes the former factory as along Seventh below Main. Those descriptions point to the same general part of Riverton but do not justify assigning a current residential parcel. The map therefore marks a broad historic block. Use the society’s two Sanborn images to compare the vanished works with today’s streets from public rights of way; please respect the homes now on the site.