Pennsylvania does not have “towns.”
The state has a few dozen cities, most notably the bookends of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The rest fall into two real categories.
Boroughs are what most people would identify as towns: communities that are bigger than an unincorporated village and smaller than a city. Townships are the vast tracts of land that may have clusters of proto-boroughs — or they were one time mostly rural but have become overflow suburb.
Plum Borough was originally Plum Township. It was born when Allegheny County was carved out of Washington and Westmoreland counties in 1788. In an 1889 “History of Allegheny County,” a short account dedicated to Plum’s population is dismissive.
“There are no villages of importance,” it reads.
That has changed. On paper, Plum essentially is now one village, ballooning from fewer than 2,000 people in 1880 to more than 10,000 when it became a borough in 1956 and 27,000 or so today.
In reality, much of Plum is a mosaic of housing developments and niche neighborhoods that can each have their own identity. Someone may not say they are from Plum so much as from Regency Park or Holiday Park.
Or they may be from Rustic Ridge. That’s a neighborhood that may spark recognition after the August house explosion that killed six people, destroyed three homes and damaged others.
But if Rustic Ridge is going to be remembered for anything, it shouldn’t be for the rubble. It should be for the response.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Rustic Ridge went from being an address to being a community affected by the same grief and leaning on each other to recover.
A TribLive story shows more than $875,000 raised after the explosion. That doesn’t count other support, like clothing and tangible goods contributed for the families who lost their homes. It doesn’t count the intangibles, like events to help kids cope with what happened.
In this GoFundMe-kind of world where people turn to online fundraising for everything from a honeymoon to a cancer treatment, the large sum of money is impressive but not that surprising.
What is amazing is that Rustic Ridge has seemed to overcome the terrible events of one summer Saturday and come out more defined by what they did together than what tore the neighborhood apart.
There may have been “no villages of importance” in Plum in 1889. That isn’t true now.
