Youngwood, Pennsylvania

Youngwood, Pennsylvania is a small Westmoreland County borough whose name blends two names. In eighteen ninety-nine the community was founded on land owned by John Y. Woods, and the name is said to combine his surname with Young, the name of his maternal grandfather.

The Pennsylvania Railroad ran a branch through here from Greensburg south to Uniontown, and in nineteen hundred the company built a large classification yard for sorting rail cars, giving the young town an economic anchor. The borough incorporated officially on November tenth, nineteen oh two. The rail yard kept Youngwood busy for decades.

When freight traffic declined in the second half of the twentieth century, the town pivoted to light industry and remained a stable small community about thirty miles southeast of Pittsburgh.