Brilliant, OH

Brilliant is an Ohio River census-designated place in eastern Jefferson County, seven miles south of Steubenville and part of the Weirton-Steubenville metropolitan area. The place began as Philipsburgh, laid out in 1819 by Philip Doddridge where roads gathered near the river and the Wellsburg wharf. A second addition, La Grange, grew around the railway station. In 1880 the Brilliant Glass Company built a factory there; the community adopted the company's name, and the glass works became its defining industrial chapter. Brilliant later incorporated as a village, then disincorporated in 1993.

Brilliant counted 1,317 residents in 2020 and now sits alongside State Route 7, which runs north to Steubenville and south toward Bridgeport and Wheeling. The Ohio River remains the physical reference point, while Buckeye Local School District supplies public education. The Cardinal Power Plant lies south of the community, adding another industrial presence to a place whose history has followed the river, the railroad, and manufacturing. On the map, Brilliant is a compact unincorporated community with a former village government and an industrial name that outlasted the factory that gave it to the place.