Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania: Glass Town

Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland County was first laid out in the late seventeen hundreds and incorporated as a borough in eighteen twenty-eight. Its main street was once a Native American trail that General Edward Braddock's army used in seventeen fifty-five on the march toward Fort Duquesne. Coal, coke, and glass drew waves of Polish, Italian, German, and Irish immigrants in the late nineteenth century.

The Bryce Brothers Glass Company arrived in eighteen ninety-six and eventually produced blown stemware used in United States embassies and White House settings. L.E.

Smith Glass, established in nineteen oh seven, turned out hand-molded pressed glass well into the twenty-first century, closing in two thousand four as one of the last hand-production facilities in the country. Mount Pleasant still holds an annual Glass Festival each September, a living link to the furnaces that defined its industrial century.