Southwest Greensburg, PA

At the 2020 census, Southwest Greensburg was a Westmoreland County borough of 2,219 people packed into four-tenths of a square mile beside Greensburg. Its earliest recorded settler, John Peter Miller, received provisional land in 1769 and full title in 1789. When asked what he wanted to call the place, Miller reportedly answered "What You Please?" That joke lasted for decades. The modern name arrived with a different kind of ambition: coal men Richard Coulter and George Franklin Huff laid out 413 residential lots in 1887, used Southwest Greensburg on their 1888 plan, and helped turn farms into a borough incorporated in 1890.

The street railway gave the new neighborhood a reason to keep growing. A trolley ran down Greene Street from 1890, and Electric Park was built to attract riders before the line passed to West Penn Railways. The trolley lasted until 1937; the amusement park became houses. Today Amos K. Hutchinson Elementary's playground and fields, Red Devil's Field, the volunteer fire department, and a few blocks of close-set streets carry the borough's daily rhythm. Southwest Greensburg is a small place with a very odd old name, a coal-era subdivision plan, and a trolley story hiding under the houses.