Bentleyville, Pennsylvania

Bentleyville in Washington County takes its name from Sheshbazzar Bentley Jr., a pioneer settler. The borough incorporated in eighteen sixty-four.

By the eighteen seventies, Bentleyville sat in the Pittsburgh coal region, and the local economy pivoted hard toward mining. Coal mines and coke ovens became the anchors of town life, drawing thousands of immigrant workers from across Europe who came to southwestern Pennsylvania for dangerous but paying work. At its peak the mines ran around the clock.

When the coal industry contracted through the mid-twentieth century, Bentleyville shrank with it. Today it is a small borough of roughly twenty-three hundred residents, its brick streetscape a reminder of the coal money that once flowed through here.