IN THE KNOW
DID YOU KNOW?
Bridgeville was
the site of a
prehistoric
mastodon discovery
By Mark Berton
40 724.942.0940 TO ADVERTISE | Chartiers Valley
M
ore than 50,000 years ago, Bridgeville wasn’t the charming Main Street
community it is today. In 1946, scientists speculated that glacial debris
dammed up Chartiers Creek creating a lake that entrapped a juvenile
mastodon in the thick mud, keeping it preserved for more than 50 millennia.
That mastodon was unceremoniously dug up by workers of the Pittsburgh
Coal Company, who were excavating a run of coal that formed beneath a layer
of clay, peat and more clay. Bridgeville and South Fayette residents know that
finding an arrowhead in the backyard isn’t uncommon, but no one could have
speculated that those arrowheads may have been from early Native Americans
firing on mastodons