Avella, PA

Avella is a census-designated place in Independence Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, where the 2020 census counted 782 residents. The community lies about thirty miles southwest of Pittsburgh, among the rolling roads and valleys of western Washington County. Avella Area School District is headquartered in the village and serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade across roughly 73 square miles, including neighboring townships and West Middletown. Cross Creek and nearby hills give the school district's roads a distinctly rural pattern, with Pittsburgh as the nearest major city.

Near Avella, Meadowcroft Rockshelter preserves evidence of human habitation dating back about 19,000 years. Albert Miller discovered the site after noticing artifacts near a groundhog hole on his farm in 1955. The National Historic Landmark now includes a rock overhang and interpretive villages representing Eastern Woodland life, an eighteenth-century log cabin and trading post, and a nineteenth-century church, schoolhouse, and blacksmith shop. Avella's map places a school district and a deep human past within the same rural landscape.