BUTLER, PA. — Butler County is many things to many people. Bucolic, industrious, suburban, and historic, it is home to over 130,000 acres of rolling rural farmland, the tiny college town of Slippery Rock, a roaring steel mill that is one of the last producers of flat-rolled electrical and stainless steels for transformers in this country, and the outpost of suburban Pittsburgh where up-and-coming families are moving to start their lives away from the taxes and crime in the city.

It is also a county steeped in history. A young former President George Washington was passing through the present-day township of Harmony, known then as Murdering Town, while on a mission to Fort LeBoeuf in Erie, Pennsylvania, when he was shot at by a French-allied Native American just a few miles from the town. Fifty years later, Harmony became the home of the religious Harmonists, an industrious sect that, today, remains perfectly intact and draws tourists from across the world.