The Pennsylvania collection
Fayette County
21 places. A county full of stories.
Discover local legends, historic places and the stories of sites you can explore virtually.
Explore this county on the map →Allen’s Haunted Hayrides
The Allen family’s farm in Fayette County became known for its Halloween hayrides, but family members said the barn’s unexplained activity predated…
OutdoorsAlliance Furnace ruins
Alliance Furnace stood beside Jacobs Creek in Fayette County, where William Turnbull and Peter Marmie established an ironworks in 1789. The furnace…
OutdoorsBetty Knox Legends & Lore marker
Betty Knox’s legend belongs to the mountain country near Dunbar and Dunbar Creek in Fayette County. She lived alone on a farm and regularly drove an…
CemeteriesCarnegie Free Library
The Carnegie Free Library in Connellsville was built on land once used as the Connell Grave Yard. Historian Bernadette Lear discovered that…
Fallen Timbers Road
A New Geneva correspondent’s ghost story appeared in the New York Sun in January 1879 and was reprinted in the Troy Times. It described a tall, gaunt…
OutdoorsFallingwater
Fallingwater was the weekend retreat of Pittsburgh department-store owners Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the house above…
Historic homesFayette County Courthouse
The clock above the Fayette County Courthouse in Uniontown is the focus of a local curse legend. The story says a condemned man was executed five…
Historic homes · Historical imageFormer Woodward homestead
Captain Isaac C. Woodward, a riverboat man, built his family home in Hiller in 1863. Decades later, former occupants told local historian Glenn…
BattlefieldsFort Necessity National Battlefield
Fort Necessity near Farmington marks the Great Meadows battlefield where George Washington’s force fought on July 3, 1754. After a day of heavy rain…
CemeteriesFriendship Hill
Friendship Hill near Point Marion was the home of Albert Gallatin, who later served as U.S. treasury secretary. His first wife, Sophia Allegre,…
InstitutionsHistoric Fayette County courthouse grounds
William Stamford spent more than fifty years around Uniontown’s jail and courthouse, first as a prisoner and later as an unusually permanent presence…
OutdoorsLaurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns is a cave system beneath Chestnut Ridge in Fayette County. One of its demonstrations creates an immediate puzzle: a golf ball seems to…
Little Redstone Church Cemetery
Little Redstone Church Cemetery stands beside the brick Methodist church built in 1857 near Fayette City, at Redstone Church Road and Navajo Hollow…
Inns & businessesMount Washington Tavern
Mount Washington Tavern, now part of Fort Necessity National Battlefield, served stagecoach travelers on the National Road. Passengers on the Good…
National Pike (US 40) at Braddock Run
At the National Road crossing of Braddock Run near Farmington, a local legend describes a soldier who escorts travelers across the water. He is…
Historic homesNemacolin Castle (Bowman’s Castle)
Nemacolin Castle, also known as Bowman’s Castle, is the Bowman family’s historic home overlooking Brownsville’s riverfront. The house’s rooms have…
CemeteriesProvidence Quaker Cemetery and Chapel
Providence Quaker Cemetery and Chapel, outside Perryopolis, is associated with a curse said to affect anyone who reads a particular gravestone. The…
Bridges & railwaysShamokin Creek
The Spook Bridge story at Tharptown, also called Uniontown, begins with Martin Goss leaving a New Year's gathering on January 1, 1830. In the account…
Smock Heritage Museum and community center
The former company store in Smock, Fayette County, became a museum and community center, but its ghost stories continued to feature someone…
Inns & businessesThe Stone House Inn
The Stone House near Farmington began as the Fayette Springs Hotel on the National Road. George Titlow bought it in 1909, and Fanny Ross later made…
OutdoorsWhite Rocks
White Rocks, a cliff on Chestnut Ridge above the Fairchance area, is associated with the death of Mary “Polly” Williams in 1810. Her body was found…