After a busy day at work, Mark Cook likes to unwind by sitting on the front porch of his 241-year-old stone house in Fairhope.
After a busy day at work, Mark Cook likes to unwind by sitting on the front porch of his 241-year-old stone house in Fairhope.
Martin is a patch town a passerby would have to visit intentionally.
As you're driving south, between the 45 mph speed limit in Perryopolis and the 55 mph limit on the final approach to Uniontown, you roll through a traffic signal next to two convenience stores and a McDonalds restaurant in the Perry Township village of Star Junction.
The Village of Shoaf, created and built on coal mining, continues to live on in semi-solitude and outdoor enjoyment.
It’s Tuesday evening and that means bingo night at the Stockdale Volunteer Fire Department.
Ohiopyle was once described as a place in which “everybody knew everybody.”
The Champion, Pa. of today is a zip code spread across the three counties of Fayette, Westmoreland and Somerset, but the rural community tucked in the mountains of the Laurel Highlands couldn't be any more close-knit.
In many ways, Fellsburg is a striking contrast to the Mon Valley’s steel mill and coal mining communities.
The Herald-Standard examines the people, culture and history of Brier Hill.
There was a time, when the coal mine was still in operation, that residents of Palmer didn't need to leave the patch.
A cold drizzle is falling over Van Voorhis, but Ron Tumidajski doesn’t let that deter him from taking his morning five-mile walk.
The following story is part of a monthly series of articles that examine the people, culture and history of the small towns that dot the landscape of the Mon Valley.
Fayette County is a community that was built on the backs of coal miners.
Time seems to run a little slower in the sleepy river town of Webster.
Visibility while driving on Route 166 through Grays Landing in Nicholson Township has dramatically improved over the last 50 years.
Addison in Somerset County is a centuries-old community where federal troops once camped on their mission to stop the Whiskey Rebellion, businesses sprang up to serve travelers along the Historic National Road and modern gas wells and recreational facilities are located nearby.
Jean Croushore's Fourth Street home in Fayette City comes with a bird's-eye view of downtown where she sets her sights on Vargo's Newstand each morning to pick up a copy of the local newspaper.
Nestled near the intersection of Meadow Street and Flinn Avenue in Ronco is a playground with two benches, two swings, an adjacent blacktop basketball court and one very intriguing optical illusion.
John Matty III proudly points to historic photos that hang from the pine-paneled walls of the borough building in Newell. The black-and-white images show a vibrant town filled with life that a few hundred folks call home within a bend of the Monongahela River.
Southwestern Pennsylvania is dotted with small villages and communities known as "patch towns" created during the coal boom. Tower Hill 1 and 2 fit the very definition of this.
On a hot, late summer afternoon, children line the benches in the dugouts of the softball field in the middle of Grindstone, cheering their dads and fanning the heat even as they occupy the only shade in the park.
Vanderbilt's main street winds through the town like a river gently ebbing and flowing as it passes by homes and buildings that serve as a testament that the town was once a vibrant and bustling hidden treasure nestled in the Laurel Highlands.
The village of Whitehouse, Pennsylvania, does not receive as many visitors or worldwide attention as does the building of the same name on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.
The experiment seems to have been successful.
The community of Penn-Craft was built to see if families of different races, nationalities and religions could live and work together when the country and the world were struggling for ways to recover from the Great Depression.
The village of Cardale in Redstone Township doesn’t have any mom and pop stores or ethnic clubs now, even the school and the Catholic church have been closed. But it has one thing that can’t be taken away, a sense of community.
Nestled between the high mountain ridges and the convergence of three rivers in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Appalachians lies a little town with a unique combination of quiet community and tourism mecca.
Like many small towns, the people of Markleysburg said it’s a friendly place, where people help their neighbors, and everyone knows everyone.
A dime and two pennies.
That's the price Rose Ann Oldham distinctly recalls she paid as a girl to see movies like "Gone with the Wind," "The King of Kings," and Elvis clips at the Karolcik Theater on Liberty Street in Perryopolis in the 1940s.
A few longtime residents of Smock gathered together to talk about the ideals that made that coal patch town a part of the fabric of Fayette County.
