Butler, PA
Opened with fanfare on September 27-28, 1929 — three turf runways and a name carved out of optimism. The Depression hit hard and the two large hangars were briefly used to store corn. Amelia Earhart earned her instrument flight certificate here in 1932 while preparing for her Atlantic solo; the long-range fuel tanks for her Lockheed Vega were installed at the field. From 1935 to 1945 the airport ran as a Civil Aeronautics Authority cadet primary training base, with cadets housed at Slippery Rock and Grove City colleges. Current name dates to 2016. Single 4,801ft runway 8/26, untowered, now serving the northern Pittsburgh suburbs.
The Allegheny River (from the north) and the Monongahela River (from the south) meet at the western tip of downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River, which then runs 981 miles to the Mississippi. Point State Park sits at the confluence — 36 acres of riverfront with a 150-foot fountain at the very tip, marking the site of the colonial-era Fort Pitt (1761) and the earlier French Fort Duquesne (1754) that was the casus belli for the French and Indian War. The Pittsburgh skyline rises directly behind the Point — the Steel City's downtown is wedged into the triangle of land between the rivers, a uniquely compact American downtown bordered on two sides by water. The Roberto Clemente Bridge (yellow), the Andy Warhol Bridge (yellow), and the Rachel Carson Bridge (yellow) — the Three Sisters — cross the Allegheny into the North Shore, where PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium sit on the riverbank.
The small western-PA town where, every February 2 since 1887, a groundhog named Phil emerges from a stump on a forested knoll called Gobbler's Knob to forecast six more weeks of winter or an early spring. The tradition descends from German immigrant folklore (Candlemas Day, badger weather-forecasting) brought to Pennsylvania in the 18th century. The 1993 Bill Murray film made the town a worldwide brand. Punxsutawney sits on the edge of the bituminous coal fields that powered Pittsburgh steel. The Knob itself is two miles outside town, an unassuming wooded hill the rest of the year.
Frank Lloyd Wright's 1935 house cantilevered directly over a waterfall on Bear Run, in the Laurel Highlands southeast of Pittsburgh. Built for the Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh department-store fame as a weekend retreat, Fallingwater is widely considered the finest American house of the 20th century — a horizontal stack of poured-concrete terraces that float over the stream rather than facing it. Smithsonian named it one of "28 places to visit before you die." The cantilevers were already sagging by the late 1990s; a 2002 structural restoration added post-tensioning cables to save the house from collapsing into its own waterfall.
The crash site of United Flight 93, the fourth hijacked aircraft on September 11, 2001 — and the only one not to reach its target, brought down in a Pennsylvania field after the 40 passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers. The plane impacted at 563 mph into reclaimed strip-mine land near Shanksville. The memorial design is restrained and powerful: a Tower of Voices with 40 wind chimes (one per passenger and crew member), a curving white marble Wall of Names along the flight path, and a black slate boulder marking the impact point. Visitor center opened on the tenth anniversary.