Biohazard Cleanup Near North Farrell Farrell, PA

Farrell is a city in western Mercer County along the Shenango River, part of the Hermitage micropolitan area.

Farrell was dubbed 'The Magic City' because it sprang up almost overnight after a steel mill was built in 1901 on a plain along the Shenango River near Sharon, in what was then Hickory Township (now Hermitage).

The community began in 1899 under the name South Sharon; in 1912, when its population reached 10,000, residents voted to rename it Farrell after industrialist James A. Farrell.

Farrell was incorporated as the Borough of South Sharon in 1916 and became a third-class city in 1932.

Farrell's population peaked at 15,586 in 1920, when the steel mill town was one of the Shenango Valley's boomtowns.

The mill — eventually the Roemer Works of Sharon Steel Corporation — was Farrell's lifeblood until it was liquidated after a 1992 bankruptcy; the plant site is operated today by Duferco, and NLMK Pennsylvania also runs steel operations in the city.

Farrell was the first municipality in Pennsylvania to enter the state's Act 47 financially distressed program, in 1987, and it did not emerge from Act 47 until February 8, 2019 — more than 30 years later.

At the 2020 census Farrell had 4,258 residents in 1,960 households — just over a quarter of its 1920 peak population.

Farrell's 2020 population was 47.1% African American and 43.8% White, making it one of Pennsylvania's most evenly split small cities racially.

In 2004 voters rejected a referendum that would have merged Farrell with Hermitage, Sharon, Sharpsville and Wheatland into a single 'Shenango Valley City.'