Buying Land in Fayette County, Pennsylvania

Zoning: no county code, and confirm township-by-township

Fayette County government does not administer a countywide zoning ordinance. As with most of rural Pennsylvania, zoning authority under the state Municipalities Planning Code rests with each individual borough and township, and adoption is optional rather than mandatory -- meaning some of the county's more rural townships may have no zoning ordinance in place at all, while Uniontown and the more developed municipalities around it are more likely to have adopted and actively enforce their own codes. The Fayette County Planning Commission does review subdivision and land-development applications countywide under the county's subdivision and land development ordinance, which is a separate process from zoning and applies regardless of whether the specific municipality has its own zoning code.

Before assuming any specific use is or isn't allowed on a Fayette County parcel, confirm directly with that municipality whether it has adopted zoning, and separately check with the county Planning Commission about subdivision requirements if you're considering dividing the parcel.

A live abandoned-mine subsidence problem, not just historical background

Fayette County sits atop more than a century of underground bituminous coal mining, and in parts of the county that legacy is an active, present-day hazard rather than settled history. Washington Township, immediately adjacent to Uniontown, has been the site of multiple documented mine-subsidence incidents in recent years: subsidence on Smithfield Street in June 2020, and a separate incident in the area of Grace Street and Perry Avenue in September 2022. Pennsylvania DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation investigated nine homes on Mutich and Hollywood Streets and found six with significant basement damage and slight-to-moderate damage on their main floors, with the long-abandoned Tremont Mine identified as a possible source. A DEP mine map reviewed in connection with these incidents reportedly shows nearly the entire township sitting over historically undermined ground.

This is meaningfully different from the active longwall-mining subsidence pattern documented in neighboring Greene County (and Washington County), where Act 54 imposes a specific statutory repair-or-pay obligation on the mining company still actively operating beneath the surface. Fayette County's Washington Township subsidence problem instead stems from old, abandoned deep mines with no current operator responsible under that framework -- which generally makes DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, not a private coal company, the relevant point of contact for both investigating existing damage and understanding a specific parcel's undermining history. See our dedicated standalone on Fayette County for what this means for evaluating a specific parcel here.

Split estates and title: check the Recorder of Deeds, not just the deed

Consistent with Pennsylvania's broader coal-country pattern, Fayette County parcels commonly have their surface, mineral (coal, oil, and gas), and -- in coal-mined areas specifically -- support estates severed from one another, sometimes going back many decades. A deed should note whether subsurface rights were previously severed, but a full title search back through the chain of title at the Fayette County Recorder of Deeds is the only reliable way to confirm current ownership of all three potential estates on a given parcel, and to check whether any recorded mine map, easement, or right-of-way affects it.