Sticktown, Elizabeth Township

Pennsylvania · USA · Cemetery

A gated hillside in Westmoreland County where a slag mill and a cemetery are all that is left.

Sticktown was a working settlement in Elizabeth Township, Westmoreland County, built around a slag mill in the era when the Monongahela valley ran on iron and coal. The mill closed, the houses came down, and what remains on the hillside is foundations, the mill site and a small cemetery. The top of the hill is gated. A tall antenna with lights on it stands there, and it is the marker everyone uses to find the place.

The stories are the kind that gather around any abandoned industrial ground: figures at the edge of the trees, movement in the old foundations, voices that resolve into nothing. Vaguer rumours circulate about people who came up here and turned up weeks later without a clear account of where they had been, though nothing behind those rumours has ever been documented and they are best treated as the modern folklore they are.

The cemetery is the part worth the walk. The stones belong to people who worked the mill, and reading them is the only remaining record of who lived on this hill. Two practical warnings, both from people who go there. The hilltop approach is gated and posted, and the site is more easily reached from the walking trails below. And there are dogs on the hill, described consistently enough over the years to take seriously. Go in daylight and go with someone.

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Wo befindet sich Sticktown, Elizabeth Township?

Sticktown, Elizabeth Township liegt in Pennsylvania, USA.