The White Lady ghost of Buela Pennsylvania

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the soil in this area is not good for farming: So much of the farm lands in the Cambria county area have all gone back to forest, and when hiking near our home, we'd find chimneys and parts of foundations, and apple trees and herbs that still survived. 

The population went up when the coal mines were open, but now the coal towns are depopulated, and some deserted (the local rails to trails hiking path is called the ghost town trail).

but when I moved there, often I would take the back road to our town from Ebensburg instead of the highway, and one section went down a hill and under a rail bridge: and that section of road was spooky, partly because it tended to fog, so my boys called this section the haunted road.

And indeed, we later found that locals claimed it was haunted, and that there was the ruins of a town called Buelah nearby. The town was settled by Welsh pioneers but it didn't last too long, and now all that is left is the cemetery: and the story that the area is haunted.

The story I heard was that the ghost was of a girl who was jilted and died of a broken heart.

Years later, we looked it up and indeed it is a famous ghost legend of the area. or as Wikipedia explains:

The Beula Ghost The abandoned ghost town, in its long period of being left uninhabited sparked the infamous "Beula Ghost" story. Many locals claimed to have ghostly experiences, a number of which ended up in the papers of nearby Ebensburg. The Alleghenian ran a lengthy story about the ghost in February 1861. The writer penned that he was out hunting late into the evening before stopping to rest in one of the last abandoned houses in Beula. After some time, he felt an icy hand on his head, following which he saw "a form clad in a flowing... garment, with long waving hair, of snowy whiteness, and a face as calm and pale as death!" Then it spoke to him, saying "'Mortal, be not afraid, I seek not to harm thee nor trouble thy spirit. I am lonely and weary."  After explaining that it was cursed to haunt Beula for loving "gold more than God", the spirit is apparently set free from its torment, or simply vanishes after lamenting its misery to a mortal being.

Photo from Countyfoxexplorer who writes about the legend:

The Lady in White can be seen along Beulah Road or in the Cemetery. There are a couple of stories that have been told about the haunting. One tale is that she was left at the altar on her wedding day. Unbeknownst to her, her husband-to-be died in a hunting accident. She never saw her beloved and died of a broken heart. The more commonly heard tale tells how she was one of the last members of the town of Beula. During a terrible winter snowstorm she attempted to make her way to Ebensburg. She was never seen again.