Point Marion is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, and is located less than one mile north of West Virginia at the confluence of the Monongahela and Cheat rivers.

Approximately three miles north of Point Marion is Friendship Hill National Historic Site, home of early American politician Albert Gallatin.

But a short time later, by the mid 1600s, the Iroquois related Shawnee tribe from what would later become upstate New York began expanding westward and southward into western Pennsylvania and the Ohio River valley regions.

In 1751 a mix of English and German settlers started moving in, and after the French and Indian War, France relinquished its claim of the region to Great Britain in 1763.

As more American colonial settlers then began to move into this frontier area, a Colonel George Wilson was granted 108 acres where the French trading post once stood.

Beginning south of Philadelphia, they worked their way westward over mountainous virgin forest, setting engraved limestone markers imported from England along the way.

In 1788, and only four years after George Washington’s visit to the area, Swiss immigrant Albert Gallatin (future United States Secretary of Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) purchased land only four miles downstream and built a country estate that would become known as Friendship Hill.

As a result of improved river travel as well as railroad access not long afterward, between the 1890s and the start of the Great Depression, Point Marion became a summer destination for some of Pittsburgh’s well-off residents, and in response, several hotels, and restaurants as well as a park were constructed.

In 1890, the McClain brothers founded a sand and gravel business, initially to supply needed materials for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The business expanded from there and operated for many decades, with barges, dredges, and a company steamboat plying the two rivers around the point.

Many of their workers were Belgian trained hand-blown glass artisans, and these French speaking immigrants from Belgium’s Walloon Region founded Saint Hubert’s Catholic Church in 1909 (rebuilt in 2005), honoring the popular seventh century Saint Hubert, who is buried back in their local region of Belgium.

But during its heyday, it was an important specialty glass manufacturer in the United States, and in the 1950s their hand-blown windows were even installed in the White House.

In 1910, planning began for the Lake Lynn Dam and Power Station just upstream on the Cheat River at the state line.

WWI caused it to be halted, but it recommenced in 1925, Cheat Lake was created, and the power station began operation in 1926.

21st CENTURY Today, as in the past, Point Marion straddles two states and two regions: Fayette County and Pennsylvania, of which it is a part, and Morgantown, West Virginia, of which it is adjacent to, and to which it remains deeply connected.

The former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that once ran through Point Marion was repurposed in 2008 by Fayette County via Federal Funds into what’s known as the Sheepskin Trail.

In 2011 the $2.2 billion Longview Power Plant began operation just across the state line, which further changed the local landscape and skyline.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase of previously not seen wildlife such as bald eagles, Canada geese, wild turkeys, coyotes, and black bears.

Eastern coyotes, which began migrating into Pennsylvania in the 1960s, are occasionally sighted and more often heard in the Point Marion valley.

Like many small towns in the region, Point Marion is quieter than in past decades, with fewer local businesses.

However, the Boat Launch at the town park continues to draw recreational boaters and fishermen from both Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Pennsylvania Route 88 crosses the Monongahela River leaving town and leads north 14 miles (23 km) to Carmichaels.