Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Loretto Loretto, PA

Loretto is a borough in east-central Cambria County, six miles east of Ebensburg and 17 miles west of Altoona, sitting at about 1,952 feet of elevation in the Allegheny Mountains.

Loretto grew out of McGuire's Settlement, founded by Captain Michael McGuire, a Revolutionary War veteran who settled his family there in 1788.

Loretto was founded in 1799 by Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, a Russian prince who gave up his inheritance to become a priest; he named the town after Loreto, Italy, a Catholic pilgrimage site, and built St. Michael's Church there the same year.

Loretto is recognized as the first English-speaking Roman Catholic settlement established west of the Allegheny Front in what is now the United States.

Gallitzin, nicknamed the 'Apostle of the Alleghenies,' was the first priest to receive all of his holy orders in America; he was declared a Servant of God in 2005, and his tomb stands outside the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel in Loretto.

Loretto was incorporated as a borough in 1845.

Loretto is the home of Saint Francis University, founded in 1847 by six Franciscan friars from Ireland — the oldest Franciscan institution of higher learning in the United States — whose 600-acre campus fills the southwestern quadrant of the borough.

Steel magnate Charles M. Schwab considered Loretto his hometown: his grand estate, Immergrün, is in the borough, and Schwab's money financed the building of the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel.

Loretto's census numbers are dominated by college students: it had 1,196 residents at the 2020 census, but at the 2000 census over 71% of its people were aged 18 to 24, the median age was just 21, and there were only 133 households for 1,190 people because so many residents live in campus housing.

Just southeast of Loretto sits Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto, a federal prison built on the site of a former Catholic seminary.