Fredericktown, PA

Fredericktown is a Washington County census-designated place in East Bethlehem Township, with 402 residents in the 2020 census. Pennsylvania Route 88 follows the west bank of the Monongahela River, below the river's great bend and near the mouth of Ten Mile Creek. The community was split from the larger Fredericktown-Millsboro census area for the 2010 census, but the river still connects the two names. An old ferry crossing links Fredericktown with LaBelle on the opposite bank, carrying people and workers across a stretch of the valley with few bridges.

Fredericktown was laid out by Frederick Wise in 1790, with an early plan of river-parallel Water, Main, and Bank streets. Coal later became the defining industry: bituminous mines operated along the Monongahela between Allenport and Fredericktown from the 1890s into the 1970s, loading coal into river barges. Former mine ground and slate dumps remain part of the valley's physical record. Fredericktown is a Pennsylvania river community where a ferry, a gridded village, and coal shipping all belong to the same landscape.