Editing West Brownsville, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
West Brownsville was sited on the inside of the sweeping curve along the [[Monongahela River]] and has relatively level ground opposite the [[cut bank]] effect giving Brownsville relatively steep slopes and West Brownsville, cupped by the inside of the curve, more flood-prone sandy mud flats lands. Historically, at a bit upstream of the location of the [[Brownsville Bridge|Brownsville-West Brownsville Bridge]] was the Amerindian crossing ford and wagon road of early westward migrants. A few hundred yards west from the shoreline, [[PA Route 88]] enters from along the riverside bluff and the south as ''Lowhill Road'' and hugs the foot of the steep Pennsylvania hillsides flanking tongue-shaped flat terrain of the streets and housing through most of the length of W. Brownsville before twisting left uphill. It exits the W. Brownsville flat climbing Northwest as ''Blainsburg Road'', climbing beside and below the bluff of [[Blainsburg, PA|Blainsburg]], a larger 'satellite' [[bedroom community]] really an extension of the community, situated above West Brownsville proper, to its North-Northwest.
 
The steep bluff behind the West Brownsville tongue provided two climbable ascents which became early U.S. roads; the more southerly heading nearly due west climbing steadily upwards over a {{convert|2.5|mi}} stretch, an old [[wagon road]], and later the [[National Road]] following the westward extension of [[Nemacolin's Path]] up to and through the outlier neighborhood known as [[Malden, Pennsylvania|Malden]] from a river-shallows area known as a [[ford (crossing)|ford]] to Amerindians, a landscape feature which attracted settlers heading west on the [[Emigrant Trail]] once known as [[Nemacolin's Path]], then the [[Cumberland Road]] and then renamed as the ''''''National Road''''''. The other ascent would allow [[PA Route 88]] to climb out of the valley where the road cut across several loops of the Monongahela to [[California, PA|California]].{{efn
 |PA Route 88 is a left bank road that generally follows the Monongahela from just above West Virginia to the outskirts of Pittsburgh, at [[PA Route 51]] near the [[Liberty Tunnel]]. The [[Norfolk and Western]] bridge crosses above the highway junction near the tunnel mouth and downtown Pittsburgh is ''just 'through Mount Washington' ''and across the Monongahela.
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