By 1771, a cluster of cabins flanked what would become the most traveled east–west road between the Allegheny Mountains and Pittsburgh. This settlement, originally called Newtown, emerged as the nucleus of a growing community later renamed for the late General Nathanael Greene. By 1799, Greensburg was already the first county seat and site of the first courts west of the mountains. With the coming of the Pennsylvania Railroad and bituminous coal mining, Greensburg by 1885 was growing, prospering, and bustling with commercial activity. Utilizing rare photographs, some unseen in sixty years, Greensburg concentrates on the city's evolution past 1900, into the years of boom and growth, and through the 1950s, hinting of future decline.