Jun 2, 2026 By Katherine Mansfield 4 min read

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a monthlong series about the people who live in our community, in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.

Had his wife not wondered what lay east of Pagosa Springs, Jonny Snider might have settled west of the Rocky Mountains.

“We pretty much had the whole U.S. to decide. Like, where do you want to move to? We got married in Vegas. At the Tropicana, which isn’t there anymore. We took, like, three-and-a-half weeks to drive from California to Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh was our end result, our destination – but at any point, we could have stopped and been like, we’re just going to live here. We had no ties to anything. We sold everything we owned, I sold the business, we had a car full of stuff and that was it,” said Snider, who was born and raised in Orange County, Calif. “We stopped at a lot of different places along the way. We ended up stopping in Colorado, a little town called Pagosa Springs. We loved it.”

But the newlyweds decided to carry onward. “If we don’t like Pittsburgh,” Snider figured, “we’ll just move back here” – to the Steel City.

When they arrived just south of the ‘Burgh, Snider said, “Everything just clicked really easy.” Snider’s mother grew up in Upper St. Clair and moved with her first husband to California. When he passed away, she met Snider’s father and together they started a family. Snider is the third of four children who grew up in the warm, encouraging home his U.S. postman father and English teacher mother created.

It was a home that encouraged education – Snider’s mother served as his teacher during high school (he was homeschooled following early education in private schools) – the kind of home in which ambitious surfer dudes could launch a silk screen business from their bedroom.

“Everyone came out with clothing companies in like the late ’90s, early 2000s. Everybody had a clothing brand, especially in California ” Snider laughed.

The business he launched with his brother, however, took off.

“We made our own first screen printing press out of two-by-fours. Then we moved into the work garage. And then from there, a thousand-square-foot building, and then a 2,000-square-foot building. By the end of it, we had, it was fully automated presses. We had employees. From our bedroom to a full-blown business. We were printing stuff for, like, Disney, big accounts like that. That was pretty cool.

Snider worked hard and played drums hard, too, and it was at a concert that he met his wife, Charity.

“She had a friend that was having a birthday. I was going to be playing a concert. We … happened to just kind of meet each other there, and we had one mutual friend. Ended up taking a photo and she was like, let me send a photo to you. So she texted it to me. Pretty much from that day forward, we never stopped talking,” Snider said.

The couple dated for a year before Snider popped the question. A year later, they said, “I do” in Las Vegas and began their whirlwind trip eastward to Canonsburg, where they are raising two children, Andrew, 13, and Madison, 10, in the East End. Snider’s enjoying this stage of fatherhood and loves watching his children pursue their passions. Like his father, Scott Snider, who took Snider surfing on weekday mornings before work and school, Snider has a blast making memories with his kids, especially memories that include traveling to Disneyland and Florida beaches.

After nearly 15 years in Canonsburg, Southwestern Pennsylvania certainly feels like home to Snider, but there are still days when he marvels at the slower lifestyle this little corner of the globe affords.

“I never knew my neighbors in California,” Snider said, marveling that many of his neighbors are high school classmates who currently reside in the house in which they grew up. “I would never see anyone at the grocery store that I knew. Now, I go to the grocery store, I have to allow an extra 10, 20 minutes to get through and chat with someone.”

Little things, like a tight-knit community, quality school districts with excellent teacher-student ratios, and affordability, make this area attractive to Snider, who recently expanded JonnySWeld, his welding, fab and metal art shop, into downtown Canonsburg.

“I tell all my friends still in Orange County, one, get out,” Snider laughed, “and two, come to Canonsburg.”