Avacant storefront on Wampum’s Main Street sometimes takes on the appearance of a florist, with petunias and hydrangeas perched on wooden crates. But then, you might notice the temporary flowers are plastic.

Sometimes seasonally, including for Wampum’s annual Christmas celebration, Sue Sherer decorates the empty storefronts to keep what she calls “heart of town” from looking too bleak. In midsummer, windowsills of a former cabinet shop still retained fragments of the holidays: scraps of golden tinsel and plastic icicles barely touched six months later.

Ms. Sherer designs flower arrangements at Ms. Peggy’s Floral and Gift Shop, which, like other surviving businesses, abuts deserted storefronts in a way that saddens her.

“You don’t want the towns to die. The old towns, that’s what brings character,” Ms. Sherer said.

Dan Vogler, Lawrence County’s commissioner chairman, said Wampum’s story reflects a larger trend in small-town America.

“Through the years, with what has changed with Walmarts, and Dollar Generals, and the internet — I think those are three primary factors in the decline of small family-owned businesses,” Mr. Vogler said. “And it’s not unique to Wampum. ... It’s not unique to Lawrence County. It’s not unique to Pennsylvania.”

Times weren’t always so hard in Wampum, a town of about 680 people with a rich athletic and industrial past. Although it differs from many Western Pennsylvania communities in maintaining its population since the turn of the century, it’s still down about 500 from its peak in 1970. Decades ago — before the steel mills left, before the cement factory atrophied, before the high school shut down — “all roads led to Wampum,” said Willbert “Dubby” Cunning, 70, a regular at the local bar called T-Bone’s Paramount Cafe.

Wampum High School’s three-time state champion basketball team, led by legendary coach L. Butler Hennon, once packed rows of bleachers, with folks huddled on the street while 10-deep crowds by the door elbowed for a peek inside. Because of all the sweat, gym heat and snowy boots, the floor outside the gym had to be mopped time and time again.

“We had no right to win, with the size our teams were, against some of the teams we played,” said Jim Hubenthal, 73, a former Wampum High basketball manager who still gathers monthly along with basketball alumni and friends in a group called “The Breakfast Tribe.”

But because years ago Wampum lost its last restaurant, Jata’s Diner, the nostalgic gang has to meet at nearby Ellwood City’s Wolverine restaurant.

Wampum has been a training ground for legendary athletes like Hennon’s son, Don Hennon, an All-American basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh, and baseball slugger Dick Allen, a seven-time major league all-star.

Chuck Dombeck tells a story during the Wampum "Breakfast Tribe" monthly meal at Chris's Wolverine Restaurant, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Ellwood City.

In 1961, Wampum High School shut down, fracturing the high school into multiple school districts. It marked the beginning of setbacks to come, local residents say.

“The community lost — I don’t know whether it’s spirit or whether it lost a reason,” Mr. Hubenthal said.

The decline of the steel industry in the 1970s saw the downsizing and eventual shutdown of nearby mills employing Wampum residents, like U.S. Steel’s Tube Mill in Ellwood City and Babcock and Wilcox Co. plants in Beaver County.

The Medusa Portland Cement Co., a major local employer, lasted longer as ownership shifted to Southdown, then Cemex. At the height of the construction season in 2005, 130 full-time Cemex workers still hauled 860,000 tons of cement on as many as 200 trucks a day. But their busy, heavy activity ended when the plant shut down in March 2010.

The local businesses of note still left include Universal Refractories, a home and office products manufacturer; Mines and Meadows ATV/RV resort; and the Wampum Underground, an old limestone mine transformed into 2.5 million square feet of an office and storage space, though it has just 13 employees.

Now, the town actually has become a “bedroom community” whose residents commute to jobs elsewhere, said Mr. Hubenthal, using a term usually applied to more prosperous suburbs.

A few organizations, like Wampum Community Revitalization and the Wampum Area Business Association, have undertaken improvement projects, but young people like 18-year-old Austin Wombeck remain skeptical.

“Wampum reinventing itself? How?” wondered Mr. Wombeck, a convenience store clerk who figures to settle in Pittsburgh after finishing college.

Wampum is like the middle child nestled between bigger towns like Ellwood City and New Castle, said Donna Kuiken, 70, president of the Wampum Area’s Women’s Club and chairwoman of the Christmas Parade Committee. However, even with just a few resources, when Wampum tackles a project it goes “full on,” she said.

One example: About 40 area businesses and organizations raised nearly $30,000 last year to replace the Christmas lights for the first time since the 1960s for the 45th Wampum Christmas Parade.

Two years ago, Wampum Community Revitalization, formed by a group of concerned Wampumites, as they call themselves, renovated the dilapidated train station baggage building into a community space. It is used for events like Boy Scouts activities and local art classes, including an art program connected to Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum. 

Through obtaining this riverfront property where the trains used to stop, the revitalization group also secured access to the river for kayaking and other water activities. This project was detailed in the town master plan, part of the Connoquenessing Creek Trail & River Access Study developed with Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The master plan details other goals for Wampum, like extending Main Street to the town’s park and creating a walking and bike trail along the river, but the revitalization group’s president, Jim Ferrante, says consultation with the state will be required before designs and engineering can progress. Currently, there is no timetable for the improvements to take place.

A creek flows underneath a railroad bridge near the edge of Wampum, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018. (Andrew Stein/Post-Gazette)

Ultimately, little Wampum’s problem may not be ambition as much as manpower.

“It’s the same 15 people that do everything in town, basically. We all belong to the same organizations,” said Ms. Kuiken, a jovial go-getter who will celebrate her 50th year living in Wampum next year.

“I tell my committee, I said, ‘I can’t keep doing this, I’m getting old.’ They say, that’s OK, we’ll throw you in a wheelchair and throw glitter or garland on ya and throw you down Main Street.”