Two Hills, Two Names, One District

There is often great confusion over the difference between "Dix Hills" and "Half Hollow Hills," made even more confusing by the fact that you live in and get mail addressed to "Dix Hills" but your school district is named "Half Hollow Hills." To make sense of this, first we must look at where these names came from.

Though it is hard to tell as we drive through today's extremely developed neighborhoods, this southern part of the Town of Huntington is covered in a hill range left over from glacial movement. Since this land was not close to the water, and not good for farming, it was not nearly as populated as areas closer to the shore. As a result, names often came from common nicknames that were given to an area.

In 1937, Romanah Sammis published Huntington-Babylon Town History, in which she describes the difference between these two areas. Traveling east from Melville along Half Hollow road you pass through "an east and west valley with a range of hills rising on its south side. This valley is the Half Way Hollow. A glance at the map of the old Town of Huntington tells us the origin of the name. Just about half way between the Sound and ocean, it divides the Dix Hills on the north from the Half Way Hollow Hills which stretch south from it until they merge with the southern plain … ."

Over time, the name was shortened and the "way" was dropped, turning into the name we recognize today, "Half Hollow Hills."

Similarly, the explanation for the name "Dix Hills" is as simple to decipher, and it too experienced an evolution into the form we recognize today.

The Town of Huntington was founded in 1653, and the area to the north of Half Way Hollow was first referred to as "dicke pechegans" in 1689, marking the area where Dick Pechagan, an indigenous person from one of the local tribes, had his wigwam and his planting fields. Over the years this name was shortened and changed to "Dick's Hills," and although a few old records do use that spelling, it quickly became even easier to just spell "Dix." While Half Hollow Hills marks the hills located halfway between the sound and Ocean, Dix Hills marks the hills that belonged to a man named Dick.

But if these "hills" are part of the same school district.

Originally, Half Way Hollow Hills built two schoolhouses – one was located at the west end of the Hollow, and the other at the east side of the southern hills. Dix Hills was initially divided into two school districts – Upper and Lower Dix Hills. In the late 1800s the north district became the Elwood School District. Then, in 1931, Halfway Hollow Hills and Dix Hills school districts decided to merge and build one school for everyone to attend. Aptly named, "The Hills School," this school represented the inclusion of everyone in the area under one system.

In 1954 the district enlarged again by merging with Melville School District and Sweet Hollow School District, it was then that the name "Half Hollow Hills" was officially adopted for the school district. In 1979, indicative of just how much land the district covered and the expanding population brought by the Long Island Expressway and Huntington's suburbanization boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the high school split in two, and graduating seniors of Half Hollow school district began to claim "Hills East" or "Hills West" as their alma mater.

So remember even though you may now live where Dick used to, you also are part of that halfway boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound.