Donegal, Pennsylvania

Sitting in the Laurel Highlands of Westmoreland County, Donegal takes its name from County Donegal in Ireland, planted here by Scots-Irish immigrants who came to western Pennsylvania in the mid-seventeen hundreds. The borough incorporated in eighteen sixty-seven, but the community is older than the paperwork. Forbes Road, the military path General John Forbes cut through these mountains in seventeen fifty-eight to reach Fort Duquesne, ran near here, and early settlers clustered along that route.

Donegal remains a small place, about one hundred residents, set against forested ridges along Loyalhanna Creek. It marks the western approach to the Laurel Ridge crossing, a passage travelers and armies have made for more than two and a half centuries.