What鈥檚 in a name: Twilight, the borough with a sleepy moniker
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
Editor’s note: This is the one in an occasional series about the origin of unusual names of places in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties.
TWILIGHT – Rather than being a city that never sleeps, you would assume someplace called Twilight would be a languid spot where the sidewalks never really roll out and its residents are always game for a good nap.
In actuality, though, Twilight is noisier than you might think.
Interstate 70 bisects the tiny borough on Washington County’s eastern edge, which means that hundreds of vehicles rocket through Twilight on a daily basis. The ceaseless churn of cars and trucks could be heard from Paul Minardi’s front porch on a recent afternoon as he talked about the community’s history and just how it got its name.
“It’s a very small borough,” Minardi said. “It’s very hard to keep a small borough going, but it’s where I was born and raised. … We’ve got (running) Twilight down to an art.”
Even if certain details of Twilight’s history are well-documented, the origin of its name is shrouded in mystery and legend. One story has it that Twilight got its moniker in the 1800s thanks to a man in Speers who would always venture out to a grist mill in the community at twilight. Then there’s the theory that Twilight got its name from the miners who once labored underground in the mines for the Vesta Coal Co., and would finish their day when the sun was disappearing over the horizon. There’s also the idea that Twilight’s name is a result of the hilly terrain and towering trees that keep the sun from ever fully penetrating its 1.6 square miles.
As unique as its name is, Twilight is not the only place on the map with that appellation. A community in southern West Virginia is called Twilight, and has a population of about 74 people. Twilight, W.Va., was apparently given its name by the U.S. Postal Service.
No matter how it got its name, though, Twilight is the home of a little more than 200 Washington County residents. It’s part of a cluster of boroughs near the Monongahela River that includes Speers and its 1,000 residents, Dunlevy, which has about 360 people living in it, and Long Branch and its population of 400 people.
Minardi has served on Twilight’s borough council for 50 years, and his pay recently increased from $5 per monthly meeting to $15. The primary duties of borough officials are overseeing six miles of roads. A handful of businesses are in Twilight – there are auto repair and motorcycle shops, a campground and a bar.
The borough’s annual budget is about $100,000, Minardi said, with a boost coming from the Local Share Account that all Washington County municipalities receive as a result of revenues generated from gaming at the Hollywood Casino at the Meadows in North Strabane.
“If we can’t afford it, we don’t do it,” Minardi explained.
And even though it borders Charleroi, he said there are no plans to fold it into its larger neighbor. Minardi pointed out that every year Twilight’s budget is in the black.
“It’s a small borough and we can control what goes on in it,” he said.