Jan 25, 2018 3 min read

The borough of Speers at 1.1 square miles might be a speck on the map, but it’s packed to its seams with employment, sleepy neighborhoods and Monongahela River recreation.

The borough also is home to the Charleroi Industrial Park Speers Site and the Mon Valley Career and Technology Center, which, according to Mayor Bill Lee, is among the best trade schools for high school students in the country.

“The people, the diversity are what make Speers special,” Lee says.

The borough, like the neighboring string of municipalities of Dunlevy, Allenport, Stockdale and Elco, were once part of Allen Township, which no longer exists.

Speers was founded by a descendant of Henry Speers, a German immigrant who initially settled in 1772 across the river in the Gibsonton section of Rostraver Township. One of his sons, Henry Speers, claimed 219 acres in 1794 in Allen Township, and named his venture Speers Intent, according to the “History of Washington County,” by Boyd Crumrine, written in 1882. The borough was incorporated in 1860 and it is now home to about 1,150 people.

“It’s a safe community,” says Annette Miceli, school counselor at the career and technology center, which has a rewarding partnership with the industrial park. “Our graduates walk across the street and go to work.”

The school and community have a “good, strong work ethic,” Miceli says. “We’re our own unique little community in Charleroi.”

The borough is bisected by Interstate 70. Route 88 divides what is known locally as Lower Speers, which borders the river, and Upper Speers, a bedroom community atop a hill above the two-lane road.

Lee says Speers is home to two of the best restaurants in Washington County, referring to The Back Porch Restaurant and Speers Street Grill.

Established in 1975, The Back Porch at 114 Speer St. is in one of the oldest houses in the area. The brick house was built in 1806 by Henry Speers Jr.

The Speers family also operated a ferry on the river, one that by the 1850s was powered by a steam engine, says Terry Necciai, a Monongahela architect and historian.

Necciai says the ferry needed to be large because it was along a route to the West that was heavily used by drovers moving animals.

The borough also has a rare, massive railroad bridge over the river, a span that runs parallel to the Speers-Belle Vernon Bridge used by motorists traveling along Interstate 70, he says. The K-deck railroad bridge was constructed in 1930 and is still in use.

Speers also has a residential section named Maple View, a once exclusive neighborhood reached at the borough’s northern border from Grandview Way. Necciai says the housing, some of which was designed by noted architects, was developed by the local chamber of commerce, beginning in the 1920s, and marketed to local merchants.