“Suddenly there was all of this wide open land, relatively high,” Wilson said. It was on a trolley line, far from the smokey riverfronts and had plenty of land to build mansions. While Pittsburgh continued to expand its industry with iron, steel and glass, wealthy residents were attracted to Squirrel Hill. “That’s the only way you could preserve meat over the winter.” “You could not live without salt,” Wilson said. Saline Street is a nod to this essential industry. Helen Wilson said residents would mine coal in the region, and there was a salt works in Nine Mile Run, where brine wells were drilled by hand near the mouth of the waterway. “Research that they submitted to us done by the National Parks Service suggested that Meriwether Lewis, when he made his last trip to Pittsburgh.stopped at the Neil Log House to water his horses.”Īs the population grew in the late 18th century, industry arrived. It’s currently being considered for a spot on the Lewis and Clark Trail Experience. So technically the log house is a reconstruction around the original fireplace and chimney. When preservationists tried to improve the Neil structure in the 1960s, Indovina said it was so unstable that it fell down. “It’s one of the earliest examples of a permanent settlement in western Pennsylvania,” Indovina said. Squirrel Hill Historical Society’s Tony Indovina says the first log houses were built in the late 1700s, including the well-known Robert Neil Log House in Schenley Park. It was funded by surplus Fourth of July celebration money in 1907.īy the mid-1700s, as French and British trappers and traders roamed the region, treaties were driving Native Americans out. There’s also a granite fountain built around 1912 that remembers “ Catahecassa Blackhoof,” a Shawnee war chief allegedly “present at the defeat of Braddock in 1755.”ĩ0.5 WESA The Snyder, or Catahecassa Fountain in Schenley Park depicts a prominent Shawnee Chief. There are still reminders to Native Americans’ presence in the neighborhood, including the Turner Cemetery, where some Shawnees are reportedly buried. While the Squirrel Hill name is today assigned to the Census-tract designated Squirrel Hill South and Squirrel Hill North, early travelers through the region would have referred to the entire hill with the name - including what’s now Greenfield, Hazelwood, Glen Hazel and Point Breeze. However, breaded and fried, they made good eating.” According to Wilson’s book on the neighborhood, in the mid-1700s: “The settlers found the squirrels a nuisance, getting into grain stores and damaging crops. There’s another theory that it could have been named after an estate called Squirrel Hill, but Wilson said it’s also difficult to verify. “There’s some references - that we can’t prove - that say it was named by the Native Americans because of all the squirrels.” “The oldest sources we’ve found, it’s always been Squirrel Hill,” Wilson said. “The presence in Squirrel Hill of Indigenous people goes back a long way, however it never was a place of settlement.”īut the Native Americans likely named the community. And there were mounds in the area, which might have been Adena, which are about A.D. “We did find a spear point that’s dated to about between 3,500 to 1,500 years ago. Indigineous people passed through the region, most likely using it as a temporary hunting ground. Helen Wilson, vice president of the Squirrel Hill Historical and editor of “Squirrel Hill: A Neighborhood History,” said because Squirrel Hill was so high, it developed differently than surrounding communities because it was hard to get to. The glaciers left Squirrel Hill on higher ground. As glaciers cut through parts of North America, their impact caused the creation of hills and deep valleys, as well as new rivers. The community’s story begins with the Ice Age about a million years ago. Sure, there are squirrels in the neighborhood, but there are squirrels throughout Pittsburgh. “How did they come up with the name Squirrel Hill?” - Roger Rafson, Squirrel Hill resident
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