Yellow Dog Village

In the early 1910s, the Pittsburgh Limestone Company built its workers homes in lieu of creating a union. Since they took the deal, they were labeled as “Yellow Dogs” by pro-union workers. Rather than chafe at the idea, the workers decided to adopt the name and called the town Yellow Dog Village.

When the mine shut down in the early 1950s, many workers left to find work elsewhere, but many people stayed as the mine was repurposed into the world’s largest mushroom mine. The town remained habited until the early 2000s when people started to get sick. In 2012, the residents were forced to leave when E. coli was found in the drinking water.

It remained abandoned for a few years until a history teacher bought the property with plans of renovating the town into a living history museum. Unfortunately, those plans never came to fruition and the town was repurchased in mid-2022.

Today, while the village remains semi-abandoned, the new owners allow tours and host open houses for a small fee. They plan on renovating a few of the houses for overnight purposes, and are allowing guests to revisit the history of this special place so many once called home.