Located on the Ohio River's west bank twenty-two miles northwest of Pittsburgh and known as Woodlawn until 1928, Aliquippa was sparsely populated as late as the mid-1870s, when the area began to attract railroad speculators. In 1878, the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie...
Sixteen miles northwest of Pittsburgh, the borough of Ambridge stretches for two miles along the east shore of the Ohio River. At this point, the Ohio flows almost due north. The borough occupies the wide floodplain close to the river's edge and a relatively flat shelf of land...
Formed out of Allegheny County in March 1800, Butler County covers 789 square miles, with the city of Butler located at its approximate geographical center. The county was named after General Richard Butler, who was killed in 1791 by Native American warriors during St. Clair's...
Butler was laid out in 1803 on a hillside above Conoquenessing Creek on land donated by John and Samuel Cunningham. Butler flourished immediately. By 1805, there were five taverns, followed by churches: Presbyterian (1815), Roman Catholic (1822), Episcopal (1824), and...
The Karns City and Petrolia area smells like oil even today. The first well was drilled in 1872, and within three years, both Karns City and Petrolia were thriving towns with telegraphs, post offices, and hotels. Today, the landscape is intensely industrial, with...
Saxonburg was founded by a group of three hundred Lutheran families organized and led by John and Karl Roebling, brothers from Mühlhausen in central Germany. In 1831, John Roebling (1806–1869) purchased 1,582 acres and began to farm and manufacture bricks. As a trained...
George Rapp, the charismatic leader of the Harmonists, purchased four thousand acres along Connoquenessing Creek from Dettmar Basse in 1804. Over the course of the next few years, the village grew to about 850 people from Württemberg, who built log and brick houses accommodating...
Dettmar Basse dreamed of building a barony for himself and his family in the forests of Pennsylvania after his finances were ruined in revolutionary France. As ambassador from Frankfurt to Paris during the Napoleonic era, he was a respected and powerful man. When he...
Armstrong County, formed in 1800 out of parts of Allegheny, Westmoreland, and Lycoming counties, has completed a difficult transition from heavy industry to lighter, more technical manufacturing. Since 2003, when it was made part of a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA, a federal...
As the Delaware were steadily forced out of eastern Pennsylvania, they settled on the east bank of the Allegheny River, calling their village Kittanning, meaning “at the great stream.” In the 1750s, the French and their Native American allies used the village as a staging area for...
This small rural community serving the surrounding farms maintains a feed mill, and hosts an agricultural fair each year in August. Since 1962, when the first of eleven congregations of Amish families moved to the area, farming and its support industries have had a resurgence in...
Located on a floodplain in a deep gorge, Leechburg is surrounded on three sides by the northwesterly-flowing Kiskiminetas River on its way to the Allegheny River near Freeport. Because of frequent flooding, there was no permanent Native American settlement until a...
Freeport sits on land settled by William and David Todd in 1796 at the confluence of the Allegheny River and Buffalo Creek. The site was such an ideal spot to moor river craft that David Todd decreed that no wharf fee could ever be charged; thus, the town became known as a free port...
Ford City, on the Allegheny River, is more intensely industrial than Kittanning its neighbor four miles to the north. With easy access to sand, coal, gas, and cheap transportation, Ford City was ideally situated for glass manufacturing. The enormous Pittsburgh Plate...
The southern half of what is now Indiana County came under European control with John Penn's Land Purchase from the Six Nations of 1768, and the northern half followed with the purchase in 1784. The county was established in 1803, but the first settlers traveled over the Kittanning...
Soon after Indiana County was formed in 1803, debate began as to where the county seat should lie. There were two possibilities, the first at the fork of Two Lick and Yellow creeks (present-day Homer City), and the second at the geographical center of the county. The latter was...
Commodore was one of several coal patch towns built by the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation (CBCC) to supply their holding company, the New York Central Railroad. At one time, Indiana County alone supplied three-fourths of the New York Central's coal needs. The coal-carrying...
Cherry Tree is named for a large wild black cherry tree that marked the site known to the local Native Americans as Canoe Place. This was as far upstream on the West Branch Susquehanna River as a canoe could navigate. With the Land Purchase from the Six Nations of...
James Campbell and Andrew Brown laid out Blairsville in 1819 along the northern bank of the Conemaugh River. The village prospered when the western division of the Pennsylvania Canal was completed in 1828, and boat-building and packet services were founded. Only a few buildings...
Located at the point where the Conemaugh River and Loyalhanna Creek meet to form the Kiskiminetas River, Saltsburg was settled in 1766. The town was laid out in 1817, three years after the first salt well was bored by William Johnson. Salt production peaked in 1838, when more than...
Created from Bedford County in 1773, Westmoreland was the last Pennsylvania county formed under British rule. Its first European colonial settlers were Scots-Irish and German, with smaller numbers of Irish and English. Several other counties were formed later from Westmoreland...
Sited on rolling hills near the geographic center of Westmoreland County, Greensburg has served as the county seat since 1786, supplanting Hanna's Town northeast of the city. Three reconstructed log houses and a log fort on Old Hanna's Town Road (PA 1032) mark that...
Vandergrift stands in striking contrast to most of Westmoreland County's company towns. Apollo Iron and Steel Company founder George G. McMurtry hired the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot in 1895 to create a landscape plan for his ideal company town. By that year, Frederick Law...
Latrobe lies at the base of Chestnut Ridge, the westernmost ridge of the Allegheny Mountains. Although the town is situated just north of the historic Forbes Road, its development is closely tied to the subsequent rise of the railroad in the 1850s. Oliver Barnes, a civil...
Ligonier Valley encompasses the area between Chestnut Ridge and Laurel Hill, and includes Ligonier, its primary commercial center; Cook Township; and the towns of Laughlintown, Rector, and Stahlstown. The valley's dramatic, mountainous setting only fifty miles east of...
Situated along Loyalhanna Creek with dramatic views of Chestnut Ridge and Laurel Hill, Ligonier is the commercial center of Ligonier Valley. Laid out in 1817 by Colonel John Ramsey, Ligonier was named for the French and Indian War fort of 1758, which was reconstructed...
In the lush woodland landscape at the base of Laurel Ridge off U.S. 30 on Nature Run Road (PA 1023) nestle approximately one hundred simple vernacular cottages originally used as summer retreats. Beginning in 1926, developers L. W. Darr and Company laid out...
Norvelt is one of two government-assisted housing projects of the New Deal era in Pennsylvania (see Penn-Craft, FA15). It provided industrial workers, who were unemployed after mines closed in...
Lots were laid out for Mount Pleasant in 1797 by Alexander McCready. Sited on a plain west of Chestnut Ridge along an early Indian path, Mount Pleasant became a commercial center for southern Westmoreland County and was incorporated in 1828 as the county's first borough. The...
West Overton Distilling Company, north elevation of the red brick distillery building, PA 819, East Huntingdon Township.
This exceptionally well-preserved,...
