One of the key routes in the nation’s era of industrial prosperity cut through the Alle-Kiski Valley. The Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1897, carried iron ore and coal from Conneaut, Ohio, to East Pittsburgh. It fed Carnegie’s Mon Valley steel mills with raw materials.
On July 2, 1967, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission approved the construction of a new power generating plant for Duquesne Light Co. The Cheswick Generating Station in Springdale included what would be a 763-foot smokestack that became one of the Alle-Kiski Valley’s most recognizable structures when the facility opened in