Brownsville Road is a road between Pittsburgh, at Eighteenth Street and South Avenue in

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Allegheny County () is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,250,578, making it the state's second-most populous county, following Philadelphia Co ...

eastwards through Mount Oliver and generally highlands situated along or near the hilltops often overlooking (and sometimes taking shorter paths cutting across the loops of the

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex ba ...

s of) 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 ...

. It has had several names over its history, and was also known at the ''Red Stone Road'' and the period it was a Plank Road managed as a

toll road A toll road, also known as a turnpike or tollway, is a public or private road (almost always a controlled-access highway in the present day) for which a fee (or ''Toll (fee), toll'') is assessed for passage. It is a form of road pricing typically ...

, ''the Brownsville Plank Road, or the Brownsville Turnpike, or locally, as the area grew into a city, Southern Avenue.'' Along its route, it would also travel through Westmoreland County and end at its ''start terminus'' in Brownsville, Fayette 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, ...

. It was a heavily used emigrant trail during the post-Revolutionary War surge in expansion west over the Allegheny Ridge to settle the now safer, now open lands of the Northwest Territory until well into the 1850s as an westward emigrant trail.

Pre-history to the 19th century

The road follows the route of ancient trails and footpaths as did many Indian roads, along the highlands and connected to the road along the descent from the

Cumberland Narrows The Cumberland Narrows (or simply The Narrows) is a water gap in western Maryland in the United States, just west of Cumberland. Wills Creek cuts through the central ridge of the Wills Mountain Anticline at a low elevation here between Wills Mo ...

mountain pass (later descended via the upland community of present-day

Uniontown, Pennsylvania Uniontown is a city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, southeast of Pittsburgh and part of the Greater Pittsburgh Region. The population was 10,372 at the 2010 census, down from 12,422 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat and ...

) to the

ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

below the bluffs known as

Redstone Old Fort Redstone Old Fort — or Redstone Fort or (for a short time when built) Fort Burd — on the Nemacolin Trail, was the name of the French and Indian War-era wooden fort built in 1759 by Pennsylvania militia colonel James Burd to guard the ancien ...

(Later became Brownsville with the "forks of the

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

" (eventual site of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

, a distance of . It later became the road connecting

with

Brownsville, Pennsylvania Brownsville is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, first settled in 1785 as the site of a trading post a few years after the defeat of the Iroquois enabled a post-Revolutionary war resumption of westward migration. The Tradin ...

, and from there via

Nemacolin's Path 450px, Braddock's Road, General Braddock's March (points 1–10) follows or parallels (and improves upon) Chief Nemacolin's Trail from the Potomac River to the Monogahela. The route from the summit to Redstone Creek, which could be used by wago ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

and points further east and further West to a similar crossing at present-day

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extending ...

. Brownsville was attractive as a point on the Eastern Emigrant Trails where travelers could reach river boat construction on the water levels of the

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

watershed—or continue across Washington County on the

wagon road ''Wagon Train'' is an American Western series that aired 8 seasons: first on the NBC television network (1957–1962), and then on ABC (1962–1965). ''Wagon Train'' debuted on September 18, 1957, and became number one in the Nielsen ratings. I ...

s westward to cross the (West)

pan handle to reach lower central Ohio and points west. It was a major route for travel by stagecoach and emigrants driving Conestoga Wagons to Northern Ohio (often via

Youngstown, Ohio Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County. At the 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, whi ...

WNW of Pittsburgh or Northwestwards for the lower side of the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lak ...

. Whatever the destination, at least one crossing of the Allegheny and Youghiogheny Rivers was needed for travelers proceeding west on northern roads.). The road was also significant during the

Whiskey Rebellion The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax impo ...

, particularly its southern half; when trans-Allegheny farmers rose in armed protest to a tax on liquor sent east by pack animal on the Cumberland-Brownsville Road—shipping distilled liquor was easier than shipping the much greater volume and weight of raw grains.

19th century

It was the route along which

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

lines first entered Pittsburgh. There are relatively few roads connecting the

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

of the

with the higher elevations to the south and west of the river. Originally, Brownsville road connected with the floodplain by the road now known as Arlington Avenue. In 1851 a

turnpike Turnpike often refers to: * A type of gate, another word for a turnstile * In the United States, a toll road Turnpike may also refer to: Roads United Kingdom * A turnpike road, a principal road maintained by a turnpike trust, a body with powers ...

company was chartered by the State of Pennsylvania to pave the Pittsburgh end of the road, and to connect it with South Eighteenth Street. After this construction, the northern end of Brownsville Road connected to S. Eighteenth Street at the crossing of the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railway. Many cemeteries were sited along the road as part of the Rural Cemetery Movement. In the 1880s, an "electric road" was built from Mount Oliver to the Concord Presbyterian Church, an area of Carrick also known as Crailo or Spiketown. Brownsville Road became a route out of the city for amusement and entertainment, including prize fighting.

20th century

Streetcar A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport a ...

tracks of the Pittsburgh Railways Co. ran down the road until 1971, ending just past the border of Pittsburgh at the " Brentwood Loop". They were part of the 53 ''Carrick'', the 53's rush-hour variant 47 ''Carrick via

Tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

'', and the 77/54 ''North Side–Carrick via Bloomfield'' ("Flying Fraction"), streetcar runs.

Notes

References

{{coord, 40.416, -79.986, display=title, dim:10km Streets in Pittsburgh Transportation in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Transportation in Fayette County, Pennsylvania Historic trails and roads in Pennsylvania