Warren County (pop. 41,815) is east of Erie and Crawford counties, on the border with New York. It’s one of 14 Warren counties.
All 14 Warren counties were named for Gen. Joseph Warren (1741-1775), who died in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Much of the county is in the Allegheny National Forest, established in 1923 after most of the original forest (mostly Eastern hemlock and American beech) had been logged. It’s now known for black cherry and walnut trees.
Hector Falls
The county seat of Warren County is the city of Warren (pop. 9,710). Warren’s population has been declining each decade since 1940, when the Census reported 14,891 residents.
On the Allegheny River
The Warren County Courthouse was built in 1877, in Second Empire style.
Statue of Justice on top
Oil was discovered in Warren in 1875, and the oil industry dominated the city’s economy for many years.
National City Bank Building (1891)
The Struthers Library Theatre dates from 1883. It originally was a library, opera house, and Masonic hall. Now, it hosts concerts, community theater, and a film series.
Renovated in 1983
Most of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was fabricated at the Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel Company plant in Warren in the early 1960s. A small replica stands in front of the Warren County Chamber of Business and Industry.
Gudrun Ensslin (1940-1977), one of the founders of the West Germany’s group the Baader-Meinhof Group, spent a year in high school (1958-59) in Warren. She died in a German prison.
Kinzua Dam was built 1960-65 on the Allegheny River, east of Warren. Construction required the forced relocation of 600 Seneca Indians, who lived on the Allegany Reservation in New York.
The reservoir extends 25 miles behind the dam.
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and the Johnny Cash recording “As Long As the Grass Shall Grow” both commemorate the Seneca who were uprooted by the dam.
The borough of Tidioute (pop. 792), southwest of Warren, is home of both the Pennsylvania State Championship Fishing Tournament and an annual reenactment of the WWII battle at the Bridge at Remagen.
Over the Allegheny River
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