History
In 1852, Burrell Township was carved out of Allegheny Township in Westmoreland County due to an increase in population in the area, by Judge Jeremiah Murry Burrell. In 1879 Burrell Township was divided into two separate townships, Lower Burrell and Upper Burrell. The present-day cities of New Kensington and Arnold were once part of Lower Burrell Township. In the years that followed, Lower Burrell transformed from a quiet, rural farm community to a residential and commercial area while Upper Burrell stayed primarily rural. In 1959, in the midst of the growth of their community, township residents voted to make Lower Burrell a third class city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Lower Burrell continued to grow substantially until the 1980s. Like many small towns in Western Pennsylvania, Lower Burrell suffered economic and population stagnation with the collapse of local heavy industry. Since the early 1990s, Lower Burrell experienced slight growth, though much of the city's commercial property, including one of its only large shopping centers, remains vacant. Preliminary data from the 2010 census shows that Lower Burrell has lost about 5 percent of its population since 2000.
The Allegheny River Lock and Dam No. 4 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
Read more about this topic: Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania
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“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)