Editing Brownsville, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed section|date=May 2023}}

In pre-Columbian times, the [[right bank]] of the Monongahela River held several mounds where iron-rich red stone predominated,{{efn |Due to the sparse availability of building space in Brownsville during its boom days, 1800–1870, these Mound Builders' constructs were demolished and only a little of them were available for examination by modern archaeologists.}} now believed to have been constructed by a branch of the [[Mound Builders]] cultures, but believed by colonials to have been forts. This led to the area near the river crossing being called [[Redstone Old Fort]] in various colonial government records<ref>See notes quoted in [[Redstone Old Fort]].</ref> and later Fort Burd when an arms cache was built there. By the time the region first became known to Dutch colonists and traders and the French in the 1640s, the lands were largely unoccupied,{{efn |The Dutch and Swedish fur traders did not leave historical documents, so accounts are decidedly second- and third-hand reports, but the rich lands of [[West Virginia]], [[Western Pennsylvania]], and [[Ohio]]—later called the [[Ohio Country]]—were all reported as lacking population and Iroquois or Iroquoian hunting lands. Three Iroquoian military super-powers each had access to the region before the 1670s: the [[Erie people]]s, the [[Susquehannock people]]s, and the [[Iroquois|Confederacy of the Iroquois]], whereafter the Iroquois emerged decimated, but atop the heap of survivors of the [[Beaver Wars]] as the [[Kingdom of England]]'s colonies took over control of most of the Eastern seaboard after the 1660s. Settlements even through the lower [[Susquehanna River]] valley and [[Province of Maryland|Western Maryland]] were inhibited by the Iroquois well into the 1750s and those of the [[Province of Virginia]], Connecticut, and Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies were "extremely chancy" until after the [[American Revolution]]. After the formation of the United States, the settlement by the government of conflicting colonial land claims and the establishment of Western Pennsylvania's and Virginia's western borders and the [[Northwest Territory]] on July 13, 1787, then served to spur western settlement from a trickle into a flood of emigrants.}} but under the management of one tribe or shared by several groups of [[Iroquoian people]]s, likely the [[Erie people]] or [[Wenro people]]{{efn |French Jesuit missionaries and traders were required to report annually on events in the new world, so that their chronicles describe Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio as essentially vacant, and the Wenro small in numbers, which leads to speculation that the Wenro had recently lost a big internecine war, and had been driven into the few towns between present-day Buffalo and [[Rochester, New York]]. The Wenro tribes were sandwiched between the Iroquois' and [[Seneca people]]'s lands and those of the [[Erie people]], both thought to be militarily powerful in the mid-17th century.}} and possibly shared with the [[Seneca people|Seneca]], the [[Shawnee people]] and the [[Susquehannock]]s. With all the rivers and streams tributary to the [[Monongahela River|Monongahela]], [[Youghiogheny River|Youghiogheny]], and [[Allegheny River]]s, there is little known about the region's precise role in the [[Beaver Wars]] of the 17th century, but when French, Dutch and Swedish fur traders penetrated to the [[Ohio River|Greater Ohio Basin]] in the 1640s and 1650s, the one thing that seemed clear to those observers was that the lands later termed the [[Ohio Country]] seemed empty and unpopulated.
 
In the 17th century, several provincial [[province of Virginia|Virginian]]s and [[province of Maryland|Marylander]]s confirmed the emptiness of the region. Before the 1750s, the area was "colonized" by weakened remnant tribes such as the [[Lenape|Delaware]] and the few Erie and the Susquehannock survivors that the Iroquois allowed to move there as tributary peoples (climbing the [[gaps of the Allegheny]]). These migrations occurred over the 70 to 80 years before the [[French and Indian War]] in the 1750s, where today's historians usually report the lands were long held as "hunting territories"{{efn |as "hunting territories" of the powerful Iroquois, likely held as conquest prizes for kicking off then prevailing the many decades of the [[Beaver Wars]], when tribe after tribe fell to other Native Americans in vicious territorial wars historians tell us, were like nothing the Indians normally practiced.}} of the powerful [[Five Nations of the Iroquois]] Confederacy.{{efn |The Erie had preemptively attacked the Iroquois {{circa|1653}}, but lost by 1657, at which time the Iroquois were known to claim lands as far south as the right bank of the Ohio opposite Western [[Kentucky]] shorelines. In the early 1950s, the closest Indian towns were Mingo communities both along the Youghiogheny to the Northeast and near Mingo Creek above present-day [[Donora, Pennsylvania]]. Shawnee and Seneca were also living in the wider area, the former a French ally, and the latter as Iroquois, the blood enemies of the French along with their [[Mingo people|Mingo]] relatives. Susquehannocks suffered a devastating succession of plagues {{circa|1671}}, leaving the Iroquois take them over as well as the [[Lenape|Delaware groups]] tributary to the once mighty Susquehannocks.}} During the Revolution, the Iroquois were divided whether to back the colonies or the mother country, and mostly did neither, attempting to stay neutral. Nonetheless, in 1778, agitated by British officers lobbying for frontier attacks, mixed parties of Tories (Loyalists) and Iroquois committed atrocities in 1778, so Washington sent the [[Sullivan Expedition]] in 1779, which broke the power of the Iroquois and reopened the [[Ohio Country]] to homesteader settlement. As a river crossing, the closest to the pass that reached the Monongahela, the town saw many settlers passing by.
[[File: BrownsvilleNeck.JPG|thumb|left|330px|View of Market Street historic district]]
Because colonial settlers believed that the earthwork mounds were a prehistoric fortification, they called the settlement [[Redstone Old Fort]]; later in the 1760s and 1770s, it became known as "Redstone Fort" or "Fort Burd", named after the officer who commanded the British fort constructed in 1759.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fort Burd in the French and Indian War in Southwestern Pennsylvania |url=http://www.spaceports.com/~meggie/psu/history/fortburd.htm |access-date=July 2, 2009 |author=Site designed by Meghan Hoke on |quote=In 1759, the Pennsylvania Militia constructed Fort Burd south of Pittsburgh high atop a hill overlooking the Monongahela River. The fort was used as a supply depot for the British Army during the French and Indian War and made river transportation to Pittsburgh possible at that time. A sturdy square fort, its curtain walls were 97.5 feet and its bastions had thirty-foot faces with sixteen-foot flanks. This stockade was surrounded by a ditch. Fort Burd was constructed on the same site as an even earlier Indian fortification known as Redstone Old Fort.}}</ref> The fort was constructed during the [[French and Indian War]] on the bluff above the river near a prehistoric earthwork mound that was also the site of historic Native American burial grounds.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.nemacolincastle.org/about/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070817234637/http://www.nemacolincastle.org/about/|archive-date=August 17, 2007|title=Nemacolin (Bowman's) Castle| quote=The site itself is steeped in history, once the location of Indian burial grounds and fortifications, the area was the intended destination of Chief [[Nemacolin]] when he guided the [[Thomas Cresap|Cresap]] expeditions across the mountains, establishing the [[Nemacolin Trail]] which later became the approximate route of the [[National Road]]. In 1759, during the French and Indian Wars, Fort Burd was constructed very near the Castle's current site. In 1780, Jacob Bowman purchased a building lot from Thomas Brown, co-founder of Brownsville, for 23 English pounds. He named the site in honor of Chief Nemacolin, setting up a trading post and later building the Castle around it.|date=July 2, 2009|publisher=Brownsville Historical Society}}</ref>

In 1774, a force from the [[Colony of Virginia]] garrisoned and occupied the stockade during [[Lord Dunmore's War]] against the [[Mingo]] and [[Shawnee]] peoples. It commanded the important strategic [[river ford]] of [[Nemacolin's Trail]], the western path to the summit; this was later improved and called "Burd's Road". It was an alternative route down to the Monongahela River valley from [[Braddock's Road]], which [[George Washington]] helped to build. Washington came to own vast portions of the lands on the west bank of the Monongahela; the Pennsylvania legislature named [[Washington County, Pennsylvania|Washington County]] after him.
 
Entrepreneur [[Thomas Brown (businessman)|Thomas Brown]] acquired the western lands in what became [[Fayette County, Pennsylvania]], around the end of the American Revolution.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.brownsvilleboro.com/| access-date=July 2, 2009| title=Welcome to Brownsville| author=Official borough website| quote=Brownsville situated, at the westernmost point of Fayette County, on the National Road and overlooking the Monongahela River was the gateway to the west. Thomas Brown, realizing that pioneers would be drawn to the Brownsville area to get to the Ohio Valley and the U.S. state of [[Kentucky]], purchased land in the 18th century and by mid-18th century a settlement was being mapped out. It was then, that the community of Brownsville (named for Thomas Brown and formerly known as Redstone Old Fort) became a "keel-boat" building center as well as other businesses for travelers. The businessmen from Brownsville supplied transportation and supplies to the traveling pioneers, and the settlement became very prosperous. The steamboat industry soon took over to facilitate traffic along the Monongahela River. The very first steamboat, the 'Enterprise,' to travel to [[New Orleans]] and return by its own power was designed and built in the Brownsville boatyards and launched from the Brownsville Wharf in 1814.}}</ref> He realized the opening of the pass through the [[Cumberland Narrows]]<ref>See [[Nemacolin's Path]], the [[French and Indian War]] (causes) and the history of [[George Washington]] as lieutenant and major in the colonial Virginia militia.</ref> and the end of the war made the land at the western tip of Fayette County a natural springboard for settlers traveling to points west, such as [[Kentucky]], [[Tennessee]] and [[Ohio]]. Many travelers used the [[Ohio River]] and its tributary, the Monongahela. Eventually the settlement became known as "Brownsville" after him. In the 1780s, Jacob Bowman bought the land on which he built [[Nemacolin Castle]]; he had a trading post and provided services and supplies to emigrant settlers.

[[Redstone Old Fort]] is mentioned in C.&nbsp;M. Ewing's ''The Causes of that so called Whiskey Insurrection of 1794'' (1930) as the site of a July 27, 1791, meeting in "Opposition to the Whiskey Excise Tax," during the [[Whiskey Rebellion]]. It was the first meeting of that illegal frontier insurrection.<ref>[http://www.whiskeyrebellion.org/timeline.htm "Timeline"], Whiskey Rebellion.</ref>

Brownsville was positioned at the western end of the primitive road network (Braddock's Road to Burd's Road via the [[Cumberland Narrows]] [[Mountain pass|pass]]) that eventually became chartered as the Cumberland [[toll road]], then the [[National Pike]] (the federal government's first ever road project), and later present-day [[U.S. Route 40 in Pennsylvania|U.S. Route 40]], one of the original federal highways.
 
As an embarkation point for travelers to the west, Redstone/Brownsville, blessed by several nearby wide and deep river tributaries that could support building slips, soon became a 19th-century center for the construction of riverine watercraft, initially [[keelboat]]s and [[flatboat]]s, but later steamboats large and small. The entire region sprouted small industries using local coal and iron deposits, selling iron fittings and products to outfitting settlers about to embark on the river. After 1845, its boats were used even by those intending to later take the [[Santa Fe Trail]] or [[Oregon Trail]], as floating on a [[poleboat]] by river to [[St. Louis]] or other ports on the Mississippi River was generally safer, easier and far faster than overland travel of the time.{{efn |According to the book ''[[Delaware Canal|The Delaware]] and [[Lehigh Canal]]s'',<ref 
 name=DEL&LHcanals>{{cite book
 |last1= Bartholomew|first1= Ann M. |last2= Metz|first2= Lance E. |last3= Kneis|first3= Michael |date= 1989
 |title= Delaware and Lehigh Canals
 |language= en |edition= First |location=Oak Printing Company, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
 |publisher= Center for Canal History and Technology, Hugh Moore Historical Park and Museum, Inc., [[Easton, Pennsylvania]] |publication-date= 1989 |isbn= 0930973097
 |lccn= 89-25150
 |pages= 4–5
 }}
</ref> the leg from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh used to take just about a month by wagon or half that on horseback. With the construction of the [[Pennsylvania Canal System]] and the [[Allegheny Portage Railroad]] in the early 1830s, a traveler willing to stay on and sleep aboard the mule-towed barges could make the same trip in just four days.}}

A large [[flatboat]]-building industry developed at Brownsville, exploiting the flats across the river in present-day [[West Brownsville, Pennsylvania|West Brownsville]] to erect building slips. This was followed by its rapid entry into the building of [[steamboat]]s: local craftsmen built the [[Enterprise (1814)|''Enterprise'']] in 1814, the first steamboat powerful enough to travel down the Mississippi River to [[New Orleans]] and back.<ref name="Pickels"/> Earlier boats did not have enough power to go upstream against the river's current. Brownsville developed as an early center of the steamboat-building industry in the 19th century. The Monongahela converges with the Ohio River at Pittsburgh and allowed for quick traveling to the western frontier.<ref>Marc N. Henshaw, ''The Steamboat Industry in Brownsville Pennsylvania: An Ethnohistoric Perspective on the Economic Change in the Monongahela River Valley'', Ypsilanti, Michigan: [[Western Michigan University]], 2004.</ref> From 1811 to 1888, boatyards produced more than 3,000 steamboats.<ref name="Pickels">[http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_692011.html#ixzz1lo2BsTLC Mary Pickels, "Oral history project focuses on Mon Valley's steamboat era"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110609063753/http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_692011.html#ixzz1lo2BsTLC |date=June 9, 2011 }}, ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'', July 26, 2010, accessed February 8, 2012.</ref> Steamboats were gradually supplanted in the passenger-carrying trade after the American Civil War as the construction of railroad networks surged, but concurrently grew important locally on the Ohio River and tributaries as tugs delivering bargeloads of minerals to the burgeoning steel industries growing up along the watershed from the 1850s. Steamboat propulsion would not be replaced by [[diesel engine|diesel-powered]] commercial tugs until the technology matured in the mid-20th century.
[[File:DunlapsCreekBridge.jpg|thumb|right|Plaque commemorating the first cast iron bridge built in the United States]]
The first all–[[cast iron]] arch bridge constructed in the United States was built in Brownsville to carry the National Pike (at the time a wagon road) across Dunlap's Creek. See [[Dunlap's Creek Bridge]]. {{As of|2023|post=,}} the bridge is still in use.

After the 1853 completion of the [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] to the Ohio, outfitting emigrant wagon trains in Brownsville declined in importance.
 
Yet the rise of the steel industry in the Pittsburgh area led Brownsville to develop as a railroad yard and coking center, generally integrated into other towns within the valley, so Brownsville and West Brownsville were tied to regional operations. While no one yard had space enough to be large, each township along the river shared resources and functioned as an elongated yard system. With its new role as railroad center and coking center together with the decline of outfitting, the town gradually lost its diverse mix of businesses, but, nonetheless, generally prospered during the early 20th century through the 1960s. Brownsville tightened its belt during the [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]], but the local economy resumed growth with the increased demand for steel during and after World War II, when many infrastructure projects improved and rerouted U.S. Route 40 over the new high-level [[Lane Bane Bridge]], clearing up a perennial traffic congestion problem.
 
In 1940, 8,015 people lived in Brownsville. Its postwar growth led to the development of cross-county-line suburbs such as [[Malden, Pennsylvania|Malden]], Lowhill, and Denbeau Heights (Denbow Heights), which were mainly [[bedroom communities]] within commuting distance. After the OPEC oil embargo of 1973–1974 triggered a recession, together with the restructuring of the steel industry and loss of industrial jobs, Brownsville suffered a severe decline, along with much of the [[Rust Belt]]. Generally, the region has declined in population and vitality ever since.
 
By [[2000 United States census|2000]], the population was 2,804, as younger people had moved away to areas with more jobs. {{As of|2011|post=,}} Brownsville has a handful of buildings that are condemned or boarded up. Abandoned buildings include the Union Station of the railroad, several banks, and other businesses. The sidewalks around the town are still intact and usable.

Brownsville attracted major entertainers in the early postwar years who also were performing in nearby Pittsburgh. According to Mike Evans in his book ''[[Ray Charles]]: The Birth of Soul'' (2007), the singer developed his hit "[[What'd I Say]]" as part of an after-show jam in Brownsville in December 1958.<ref>Mike Evans, ''Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul'', London: [[Omnibus Press]], 2007.</ref>