If you want to visit the historic site where the Pinkerton guards arrived during the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, go not to the former site of the plant's gate in Homestead but to the site of its Pump House, which is in Munhall.

Planning to get a book from the Carnegie Library of Homestead? You'll be checking it out in Munhall.

If you want to buy a house in Homestead Park, you'd look in Munhall.

And if you die in that house and you're buried in Homestead Cemetery, you'll be spending eternity in Munhall.

Even the old Homestead Hospital is mostly in Munhall.

It's clear that where the boundaries of Munhall and Homestead converge, and even where they don't, confusion follows.

It's because Homestead gets all the name recognition, for reasons that include having long been linked to the steel mills that gave Homestead a prominent place in history.

Mayors of the two towns, understandably, are split on the issue.

For Munhall Mayor Raymond Bodnar, the municipal misnomers are that community's "identity crisis."

But Homestead Mayor Betty Esper, who has a congenial relationship with Bodnar, sees it all as positive. "I like it," she said. "It's all part of what I call 'Greater Homestead.' "

Indeed, the boundary line between Homestead and Munhall is so confusing that Rand McNally, publisher of the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Street Guide, put the Munhall borough building in Homestead until its most recent edition, where it removed the building altogether.

The success of The Waterfront, a 300-acre mix of shopping, office space and residential development, has made the boundary issue all the more obscured in the public's mind. That complex is in Homestead, Munhall and West Homestead.

It's a wonder anyone knows where she is.

Janell Kletter, 19, of Bethel Park, lunching at Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits at The Waterfront one afternoon last week, thought she was in Homestead.

But Popeyes is in Munhall, and that surprised Kletter.

That's the sort of thing that really bothers Tony Valencia, 53, of Munhall, a construction worker who lives near, yes, the Carnegie Library of Homestead, which, as previously reported, is in Munhall.

"It's all confusing," Valencia said. "Everybody thinks they are in Homestead."

He said he and many of his neighbors, all proud to live in Munhall, would like to at least see the name of the library changed to properly reflect the community in which it legally stands.

Much of the naming, or mislocating, of local institutions are matters of Homestead history and timing.

Communities around Homestead sometimes were created after venerable structures were built. Carnegie Library of Homestead was dedicated in 1898, for example.

Homestead Borough was chartered in 1880, a natural progression because it had become a developed section of Mifflin Township, which covered most of what is now the Mon Valley in Allegheny County.

Homestead's neighbors, West Homestead and Munhall, were incorporated in 1901. Adjacent Whitaker was incorporated in 1904.

So, while all these towns were being born, the Homestead Works had been well-established, being called such even before Andrew Carnegie bought the plant in 1883, according to histories of Carnegie.

Even the famous strike and massacre by the Pinkerton guards at the Homestead Works occurred nine years before Munhall's boundaries were delineated.

The strike was known as the Homestead Steel Strike. Union workers, locked out of their jobs by Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, fought the 300 Pinkertons, whom Frick had hired to secure the plant. All of the action occurred around the mill's Pump House in Munhall.

For all of Homestead's historic muscle, Munhall, says its mayor, has present day statistics in its corner that show the town overshadowed in the public's mind, ought to get more lip service.

Using an anatomical analogy, Bodnar insists that Munhall is more the palm of the area in question, with the fingers of West Homestead, Homestead and Whitaker spreading out from the center.

As evidence, he pointed to the populations of the boroughs: Munhall has a population of 12,000; Homestead, 3,500; West Homestead, 2,200; and Whitaker, 1,300.

The Homestead Park section of Munhall is home to about 9,000 people and hosts about 90 businesses, he said.

Down at The Waterfront, home to 60 shops and businesses, according to its Web site, which, incidentally, proclaims the development "where Pittsburgh comes to life," the lines continue to blur.

Shopping there last week, Jeff Perry, 21, of Pittsburgh, had just bought a few shirts at Abercrombie & Fitch when said he believed he was in Homestead.

But the map showed he was actually in West Homestead. He expressed surprise before driving away.

A few minutes later, he was back in the same parking space he had just vacated, to show a reporter a receipt from the store.

It gave a Homestead address.