Norvelt, Pennsylvania, Eleanor Roosevelt's New Deal Town

In April nineteen thirty-four, the federal government purchased thirteen hundred and twenty-six acres of Westmoreland County farmland and began building homes for unemployed workers crushed by the Depression. The project was called Westmoreland Homesteads, and it came with running water and electricity, amenities Eleanor Roosevelt insisted upon as the program's most visible champion. In nineteen thirty-seven, residents renamed the town by combining the last syllable of Eleanor with the first syllable of Roosevelt: Norvelt.

The first lady visited that same May to mark the arrival of the community's last homesteader. Two hundred fifty-four families made lives here during the darkest decade of the century. Decades later, author Jack Gantos used the town as the setting for his Newbery Medal-winning novel Dead End in Norvelt.