Blawnox, PA

Blawnox began as Hoboken, a late-19th-century settlement on the Allegheny River east of Pittsburgh. Steel became the main local industry, with Blaw Steel and Knox Welded and Pressed Steel operating in the community. When Blaw Steel acquired Knox in 1917, the combined Blaw-Knox name became the borough’s own name. Blawnox incorporated from O’Hara Township in 1925, and the manufacturing plant helped define its footprint and its place in the Allegheny Valley. The town’s story is easy to trace on a map: river on one side, O’Hara around much of it, and the steel works that gave a former company town its lasting name.