Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in St. Marys, PA

St. Marys was founded on December 8, 1842 — the Feast of the Immaculate Conception — by Bavarian Roman Catholics who bought a 30,000-acre tract in the Elk County wilderness to escape religious bigotry in the cities.

Before leaving the Philadelphia area, the settlers had an elaborate city plan drawn up whose main feature was an octagon of eight avenues; the hills and Elk Creek made it impossible to build, but its surviving streets still form the odd-angled 'Diamond' at the center of downtown.

Benedictine monks and sisters took over the settlement's religious life in 1850, and the convent they built in 1852 was the first Benedictine women's community in the United States.

St. Marys was incorporated as a borough in 1848, but in 1992 it absorbed the surrounding township of Benzinger and reincorporated as a city, taking the slogan 'Pennsylvania's Newest City.'

That merger made St. Marys the second-largest city in Pennsylvania by land area, behind only Philadelphia — yet with about 128 people per square mile it is one of the least densely populated cities in the state.

St. Marys had 12,738 residents at the 2020 census, down from a peak of 14,471 in 2000.

The city has roughly 5,700 households, and about 78% of its homes are owner-occupied.

St. Marys proudly calls itself the 'Powdered Metal Capital of the World' — by some industry measures, around 40% of the world's powdered-metal parts are made in north-central Pennsylvania.

Beer is the city's other famous product: Straub Brewery, whose roots go back to an 1855 brewery, has been brewing in St. Marys since the 1870s and still runs its brewery on Sorg Street.

Around 1900 St. Marys was home to the Novelty Incandescent Lamp Company, an early light-bulb maker that through mergers became part of Sylvania, which still operates a major plant in the city.