Golf in Belle Vernon

Belle Vernon occupies the Monongahela River valley in the southern tier of Westmoreland County where it borders Fayette County, in the industrial Mon Valley corridor that once produced steel and coke for the Pittsburgh furnaces upstream. The Mon flows west here, flanked by steep hillsides that limited level ground and forced development to stack up the valley walls. This is steel country in its most recognizable form: river towns with compressed commercial strips, hillside neighborhoods of small frame houses, and the heavy industrial presence that made southwestern Pennsylvania the economic engine of an earlier America. Belle Vernon's position near the Westmoreland-Fayette line gives it proximity to both Greensburg's commercial center to the northeast and the Laurel Highlands resort country beginning in Fayette County to the south. Golf here serves the valley communities' recreational needs in a landscape shaped more by river and ridge than by suburban sprawl.