Sharon

Sharon was settled in 1795, incorporated as a borough on October 6, 1841, and incorporated as a city on December 17, 1918. The city currently operates under the PA third-class city charter with a mayor-council form of government.

The founding families of Sharon first settled on the flat plain bordering the Shenango River (this area is situated between two hills and is the current location of Sharon's downtown and the North and South flats business districts). According to local legend, the community probably received its name from a Bible-reading settler who likened the location to the Plain of Sharon in Israel.

Thanks to its large coal deposits, Sharon City was once an industrial center, with rolling mills, boilers, machine shops, furnaces, flour mills, ordnance works, and manufactories of explosives, nails, horse collars, spokes, chains, stoves, and lumber products. Today, there is still some steel and metalworking as well as other manufacturing, but the city has experienced levels of deindustrialization; despite the reclamation of several industrial sites and investments from manufacturing businesses, most of the city's job growth today is in the service sector.