West Overton party to kick off Scottdale's year-long 150th anniversary celebration

Scottdale Borough turns 150 on Monday, and the community is celebrating a day early, with a free party at nearby West Overton Village.

The event is set for 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday at the historic site off Route 819 in East Huntingdon.

The party is among a series of events and activities throughout the year that will spotlight Scottdale’s history as a center for several industries that boomed in the decades before the Great Depression.

“We wanted to make this an event to remember, where the whole community can get together to kick off the yearlong celebration of the 150th anniversary,” said Lindy House, a member of the anniversary committee and vice president of the Scottdale Historical Society.

The afternoon at West Overton will include a scavenger hunt, music by a husband-and-wife disc jockey team and catered food prepared by culinary students at the Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center in New Stanton. For young party attendees, the Scottdale Public Library will provide a craft activity and Taylor McNeice of Taybug Paints will offer face painting.

With free entry to the West Overton Museum, in a former whiskey distillery, those arriving for the party in the museum’s lower-level Overholt Room may head upstairs to view the exhibit “Forging Ahead and Falling Behind.” It documents how the Industrial Revolution affected West Overton, originally a farming community, featuring the stories of eight people who lived and worked there.

Related events

Aaron Hollis, co-executive director at West Overton and a Scottdale resident, is a member of the 150th anniversary committee and will present a discussion on “Our Coal and Coke History” at 7 p.m. March 7 in the Overholt Room. It’s the first of a half dozen historical presentations in an anniversary speaker series that will occur throughout the year at various Scottdale-area venues.

Other topics include local involvement in professional baseball, local “hangouts,” the town’s “notable men and women,” fire department history and the Depression era.

Less formal storytelling sessions are planned at Scottdale’s library. “These tend to be first-person memories and experiences,” Hollis said.

Lincoln Jamison will speak about “Growing Up Black in Scottdale” at the next storytelling event, set for 6:30 p.m. Monday.

House said the committee hopes eventually to make recordings of the speaker and storytelling events available online “for future generation to view and for anybody who wasn’t able to get out to see the talks.”

Residents and visitors to Scottdale also can expect to find the 150th anniversary theme included at events held annually in the town — including a car show, set for June 15; a July 6 block party; the Aug. 18 Picnic in the Park at Loucks Park; and the culminating Fall Festival, scheduled for Sept. 20-22.

The fall festival is expected to include an art show and a 150th tribute display.

“We want to infuse the spirit of the anniversary into things that are already happening,” Hollis said.

Visit scottdalehistoricalsociety.com/scottdale-150 for more information about 150th anniversary activities.

Family ties link Scottdale, West Overton

The venue choice for Sunday’s party is appropriate, given the ties that link West Overton and Scottdale.

One of the most well-known links is embodied by industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who was born in 1849 at West Overton and whose H.C. Frick Coke Co. in Scottdale became one of the largest producers of coke in the country.

Frick was descended from the Overholt family who founded West Overton. That also was the case with many descendants of Peter Loucks, who married into the Overholt family.

“Anna Overholt and Peter Loucks were married and they came to the area in 1800,” said Tom Zwierzelewski, president of the Scottdale Historical Society. “In 1801, they acquired 80 acres, which is in the area of Scottdale now.”

Among the couple’s grandchildren who took over sections of the family’s expanded land holdings were Jacob, Peter and Catherine Loucks, who each had an added middle initial S.

Said Zwierzelewski, “They started to develop lots where Pittsburgh Street is today. There were 25 lots sold for $125 apiece. Within a year, they were all sold out, and they had to develop more lots.”

Originally known as Fountain Mills, the community was renamed Scottdale when it became a borough in 1874. It was named in honor of Col. Thomas A. Scott, assistant secretary of war during the Civil War and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad when it opened a Scottdale branch in 1873.

That rail link, combined with the area’s natural resources, led to an economic boom in Scottdale during the late 19th century and early 20th century. In addition to coal and coke operations, the community gained a pipe foundry, a rolling mill and lumber and publishing companies.

“It was a very busy hub,” Zwierzelewski said. “There were many millionaires in Scottdale before the Depression. With that wealth came so much grand architecture. So many of these Victorian-era mansions are still in private hands. It makes Scottdale an architectural jewel.”

The Scottdale Historical Society occupies the restored former home of the younger Peter S. Loucks at 527 N. Chestnut St., Scottdale. Originally built in the 1830s, it gained its Victorian look in the 1880s.