Blainsburg is an unincorporated outlier community of West Brownsville, PA; by tradition a hamlet sized neighborhood with more actual housing acreage than West Brownsville proper in Washington County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, United States. Named after a U.S. Senator,

James G. Blaine James Gillespie Blaine (January 31, 1830January 27, 1893) was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative ...

. Blainsburg is part of the California Area School District . West Brownsville residence students attend

Brownsville Area School District The Brownsville Area School District spans portions of two counties. In Fayette County, Pennsylvania it covers the Borough of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Brownsville and Brownsville Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, Brownsville Township, Lu ...

in Fayette County,

. The bedroom community is situated on the bluff above and slightly North-northwest of West Brownsville on the river bottom below. Blainsburg is located alongside but above the climb

PA Route 88 Pennsylvania Route 88 (PA 88) is a north–south state highway located in southwestern Pennsylvania. The southern terminus of the route is at U.S. Route 119 (US 119) in Point Marion less than from the Pennsylvania-West Virginia bord ...

makes from the W. Brownsville river flats (Locally known as ''Blainsburg Hill Road'') which bends right entering a shelf where it connects with the northwest streets of Blainsburg before taking a second ascent (now becoming ''California Road'') towards

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

is an old style two lane highway that connects the business districts of left bank communities in the

Mon Valley The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-cen ...

. The parent and child communities are on the inside curve of a great meander in the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in North Cen ...

Southwestern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

creating a degraded

cut bank A cut bank, also known as a river cliff or river-cut cliff, is the outside bank of a curve or meander in a water channel (stream), which is continually undergoing erosion.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak Cut banks are found in abu ...

turned ramp and terrace on the opposite shore where Brownsville is situated. Blainsburg is often misspelled with an "E" in it, to match the spelling of its namesake,

. Blainsburg as of official records was founded in 1906 and is still spelled without the "E".

Geography

The majority of elevationsElevations in this section are 'measured' satellite data or USGS reported by GoogleEarth software. in (very flat) West Brownsville average 770–780 ft, while only a short distance away the elevations in the larger street grid of Blainsburg run from 930–1040 feet. Measured at Pittsburgh Rd. Jct. with 5th Avenue, the elevation in Blainsburg is , nearly above the junction of Main St. and Pittsburgh Rd. in West Brownsville. The GoogleEarth ruler tool reports the distance between the two points is —a

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

of 18.57%—a very steep slope by any measure. Pennsylvania Route 88 climbs roughly parallel (starting from farther south in West Brownsville and rises at slower rate, so the higher side of Blainsburg is actually atop a bluff lining and overlooking the more moderated climb of the highway. In addition, Blainsburg over looks a

rail yard A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock or u ...

and an important railroad bridge built by the

Monongahela Railroad The Monongahela Railway was a coal-hauling short line railroad in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the United States. It was jointly controlled originally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Ra ...

tying the

railroad wye In railroad structures, and rail terminology, a wye (like the'' 'Y' ''glyph) or triangular junction (often shortened to just "triangle") is a triangular joining arrangement of three rail lines with a railroad switch (set of points) at each cor ...

, sidings, and small yard in Brownsville along Albany Road with the much larger yard in West Brownsville.

References

External links

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Washington County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania