Farther southeast along the Muddy River toward Lake Mead, Overton, like Logandale, was established by Mormons and survives as an agricultural community. Though still a small town, Overton is also experiencing growth as subdivisions develop on its edges. The town grid, consisting of a few...
Located a few miles off I-15, Bunkerville has escaped the traffic and tourists that its neighbor, Mesquite, has attracted as a border town. Bunkerville, with a population of about 1,000, retains the atmosphere of its early agricultural days when it was settled in 1877 by members of the...
Mormons from St. George founded Mesquite on the Spanish-Mormon Trail in 1880, abandoned it in 1892, then resettled it in 1895. As did those in Bunkerville, early settlers here laid out an orderly grid for streets and lots. Though established as an agricultural community, Mesquite has since...
In the late nineteenth century, railroads had not yet reached the southeastern corner of Nevada. By the turn of the century, however, the Union Pacific Railroad and the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake line eyed the region, looking for ways to connect Salt Lake City to Los Angeles....
Panaca, named after the Southern Paiute word for metal, panaka, has survived since its founding by Mormons in 1864—a longevity not shared by the Mormon towns to the south. Settling in a flat plain between two mountain ranges, Panaca's farmers irrigated their fields in the summer with...
Founded in 1869, Pioche rode the wave of mining discoveries beginning with the Comstock Lode strike in 1859 on the other side of the state. Though the Mormon community of Panaca stood nearby and might have had a moderating influence, Pioche's remoteness and lawlessness gave it a reputation...
Location, natural resources, and transportation routes have always played important roles in shaping Ohio’s history and its architecture. Long before Europeans arrived, the earliest inhabitants of present-day Ohio left their mark on the landscape. The prehistoric cultures of the Fort Ancient, Adena, and...
This book is an orderly framework placed over the jumble of reality—and what a luxuriant jumble surrounds us in western Pennsylvania. The rolling hills change colors with the seasons, from delicate greens in the spring to brilliant golds and auburns in the fall. The swirling fog,...
It took four tries to establish Pittsburgh. The Point—the place at which the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to form the Ohio—was fortified both by a party of Virginians and by the French in 1754, then by the British in 1759–1761. But these...
The 255-acre Golden Triangle is roughly comparable in shape to Lower Manhattan from its tip to Greenwich Village, and Pittsburgh's skyline creates an equally strong image. Although it has fewer skyscraper towers and their scale is less dramatic, the urban matrix is a good deal...
The Oakland plateau consists of several hundred acres at a much higher elevation than the Golden Triangle and three miles east of it. Crowded now by the buildings of the University of Pittsburgh and its medical center, the plateau, part of a tract of several thousand acres that once...
Pittsburgh's South Side, occupying an extensive floodplain on the south bank of the Monongahela River across from the Golden Triangle, offers a completely different visual experience from the glitz of the downtown skyline or the flashy new sports stadia and...
The Monongahela River led Pittsburghers upriver from West Virginia, and the Allegheny led them to upstate New York, but the Ohio River was their path to the larger world, via the Mississippi River to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The gateway to this prospect was McKees Rocks...
Immediately opposite downtown Pittsburgh on the north bank of the Allegheny River is the district called North Side. (Local city planners are attempting to substitute the loftier “North Shore,” but to date the term has not stuck.) This was originally Allegheny...
Every city in the world is a city of neighborhoods, and Pittsburgh is no different. But neighborhoods seem more distinct here, and their hold on the residents is tenacious. The city's innate conservatism accounts, in part, for the...
The Strip, Polish Hill, and Lawrenceville are three contiguous neighborhoods that are linked by topography and a shared involvement in early industry. The Strip got its name from its shape: a flat, long, narrow strip of three hundred acres...
Two Pittsburgh neighborhoods that could be said to live in a symbiotic environment are East Liberty and Highland Park. Highland Park was being farmed before the American Revolution, but was given its street patterns only after the Civil War. East Liberty was already a flourishing...
From the 1850s, the Pennsylvania Railroad provided daily commuter trains from the congestion and pollution of downtown Pittsburgh to the emerging suburbs to the east. Shadyside evolved into a particularly distinguished suburb for an upper-middle class that now had...
The Hill and the Bluff offer another example of two Pittsburgh neighborhoods tightly linked. The first is oriented toward the Allegheny River and the second to the Monongahela, with 5th and Forbes avenues forming a corridor between them. Both neighborhoods are a world...
The boroughs of Wilkinsburg, Churchill, and Monroeville line up in a row extending east of Pittsburgh, but they have little in common beyond a shared growth pattern as pike towns. A settlement at what is now Wilkinsburg existed even before the American Revolution, but the town...
Were one to draw a crescent of about forty miles in circumference—from the Allegheny County Airport ( AL60) near the Monongahela River, west to the Pittsburgh International Airport (1992, Tasso Katselas Associates...
The southwestern counties (Beaver, Butler, Armstrong, Indiana, Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene, and Washington) surrounding Pittsburgh and Allegheny County share the topography of the Allegheny Plateau. Rolling hills created by erosion from thousands of streams reach to...
Beaver County on Pennsylvania's western boundary and northwest of Pittsburgh is part of the large Appalachian Plateau now eroded by creeks and waterways into gently rolling hills. At its heart lies the confluence of the Beaver and the Ohio rivers. The county's most populous...
Major trails west to Ohio and north to Erie made this area a popular Native American meeting place between 1730 and the late 1780s. It had several names, including Sawcunk, Beaver's Town, and Shingas Old Town. In the 1750s, warriors of the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo...
The borough of Bridgewater, two blocks wide and eight blocks long on the western shore of the Beaver River, has been joined by a bridge to the eastern shore since 1816. The town was laid out in 1818 by innkeeper Joseph Hemphill, whose house still exists at 815 Market...
The town of Rochester sits on a rocky promontory above the confluence of the Beaver and the Ohio rivers. The steeply sloping site, characterized by radial streets and triangular lots, accommodates more than 4,000 residents. The floodplain along the Ohio River is...
New Brighton lies along the floodplain of the Beaver River northeast of its confluence with the Ohio. The river drops steeply at this point, creating the waterfall that supplied waterpower to fuel many mills and manufacturing businesses in the early nineteenth century. The...
Beaver Falls grew from a tiny riverside community into a large industrial city over the course of the nineteenth century. Founded on the west side of the Beaver River in 1800 by brothers Daniel and William Constable, it was first named for their hometown of Brighton, England. In...
The earliest inhabitants along Little Beaver Creek were primarily members of the Delaware, Mingo, and Shawnee tribes. The first European settlers were farmers who called the village Greersburg, after George Greer, one of the three original landholders. By the early nineteenth...
Hookstown, about three miles south of the Ohio River, is a simple farming community and crossroads town with a preponderance of nineteenth-century red brick houses. An 1817 map shows roads from Pittsburgh and Washington, Pennsylvania, converging just below Hookstown. The road...
