Pennsylvania is a state in the eastern part of the United States. One of the original Thirteen Colonies that founded the country, it is known as the Keystone State, which is appropriate given its central location among the original colonies, or the Quaker State. With industry making Conestoga wagons and rifles, and tobacco farms, it was a transitional area bearing characteristics of both the heavily industrialized North and the agrarian South.
Akron Allentown Altoona Bartonsville Bedford Belle Vernon Bensalem Bentleyville Berwyn Bethel Bethlehem Blairsville Blakeslee Bloomsburg Blue Bell Bradford Breezewood Breinigsville Bridgeville Bristol Brookville Burnham Bushkill Butler Camp Hill Canadensis Canonsburg Carlisle Carnegie Chadds Ford Chambersburg Chester Clarion Clarks Summit Clearfield Collegeville Columbia Concordville Conshohocken Coraopolis Cranberry Township Danville Delaware Water Gap Delmont Denver Dickson City Donegal Drums Du Bois Duncansville Dunmore East Stroudsburg Easton Ebensburg Edinboro Enola Ephrata Erie Essington Etters Exton Fairfield Farmington Fogelsville Fort Washington Frackville Franklin Frazer Gettysburg Gibsonia Glen Mills Grantville Greencastle Greensburg Grove City Hamburg Hamlin Hanover Harrisburg Harrisville Hawley Hazleton Hermitage Hershey Honey Brook Horsham Hummelstown Huntingdon Indiana Intercourse Jim Thorpe Johnstown Jonestown Kennett Square Kittanning Kulpsville Lackawaxen Lafayette Hill Lahaska Lake Harmony Lakeville Lancaster Langhorne Lansdale Latrobe Lebanon Lehighton Leola Lester Levittown Lewisburg Ligonier Lionville Lock Haven Macungie Malvern Manheim Mansfield Mars Marshalls Creek Matamoras Meadville Mechanicsburg Mendenhall Mercer Middletown Mifflintown Mifflinville Milford Mill Hall Milroy Monaca Monroeville Montgomeryville Montoursville Moosic Morgantown Mount Joy Mount Pocono Mountville Myerstown Narvon New Castle New Columbia New Cumberland New Freedom New Holland New Kensington New Stanton Norristown North East North Wales Oakdale Oil City Paradise Philadelphia Phoenixville Pine Grove Pittsburgh Pittston Plymouth Meeting Pocono Manor Pottstown Pottsville Punxsutawney Quakertown Radnor Reading Ronks Sayre Scotland Scotrun Scranton Selinsgrove Sewickley Shamokin Dam Shartlesville Shillington Shippensburg Skytop Somerset Springfield State College Stroudsburg Tannersville Tarentum Titusville Towanda Trevose Tunkhannock Uniontown Warfordsburg Warren Warrington Washington Wayne Waynesboro Waynesburg Weisenberg West Chester West Conshohocken West Hazleton West Homestead West Middlesex West Mifflin Wexford White Haven Wilkes Barre Williamsport Willow Grove Wind Gap Wormleysburg Wyomissing Yardley York
Consequently, three Keystone State cities—Philadelphia, Lancaster, and York—served as capital of the new nation, with the Founding Fathers drawing up and signing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is known as the cradle of the American Nation.
Pennsylvania has two coastal areas: 63 miles (100 km) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) along the Delaware Estuary. Philadelphia is home to a major seaport and shipyards on the Delaware River.
Pennsylvania's nickname, the Keystone State, is quite apt, because the state forms a geographic bridge both between the Northeastern states and the Southern states, and between the Atlantic seaboard and the Midwest. It is bordered on the north and northeast by New York; on the east, across the Delaware River by New Jersey; on the south by Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia; on the west by Ohio; and on the northwest by Lake Erie. The Delaware, Susquehanna, Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers are the major rivers of the state. The Youghiogheny River and Oil Creek are smaller rivers which have played an important role in the development of the state.
Pennsylvania is 180 miles (290 km) north to south and 310 miles (500 km) east to west. The total land area is 44,817 square miles (119,283 km²)—739,200 acres (2,990 km²) of which are bodies of water. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States. The highest point of 3,213 feet (979 m) above sea level is at Mount Davis. Its lowest point is at sea level on the Delaware River. Pennsylvania is in the Eastern time zone.
The western third of the state can be considered a separate large geophysical unit, distinctive enough that it may best be described on its own. Several important, complex factors set Western Pennsylvania apart in many respects from the east, such as the initial difficulty of access across the mountains, rivers oriented to the Mississippi River drainage system, and above all, the complex economics involved in the rise and decline of the American steel industry centered around Pittsburgh. Other factors, such as a markedly different style of agriculture, the rise of the oil industry, timber exploitation and the old wood chemical industry, and even, in linguistics, the local dialect, all make this large area sometimes seem a virtual "state within a state".
Pennsylvania is bisected diagonally by ridges of the Appalachian Mountains from southwest to northeast. To the northwest of the folded mountains is the Allegheny Plateau, which continues into southwestern and south central New York. This plateau is so dissected by valleys that it also seems mountainous. The plateau is underlain by sedimentary rocks of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian age, which bear abundant fossils as well as natural gas and petroleum. In 1859, near Titusville, Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in the U.S. into these sediments. Similar rock layers also contain coal to the south and east of the oil and gas deposits. In the metamorphic (folded) belt, anthracite (hard coal) is mined near Wilkes-Barre and Hazelton. These fossil fuels have been an important resource to Pennsylvania. Timber and dairy farming are also sources of livelihood for midstate and western Pennsylvania. Along the shore of Lake Erie in the far northwest are orchards and vineyards.
Pennsylvania has 89 miles (143 km) of shoreline along the Delaware River estuary but is a landlocked state with no coastline bordering the Atlantic Ocean. (The difference between the coast (the shore of an ocean) and the shore (a protected bay, bayou, estuary, or sound) and how these concepts are measured is explained at length in an extended footnote under "Miscellaneous" in the article on New Hampshire.) Pennsylvania is the only truly landlocked state of the original thirteen states, although Connecticut, located on the Long Island Sound, also has no actual coastline.
Pennsylvania has one of the largest seaports in the U.S. on its narrow shore, the Port of Philadelphia. In the west the Port of Pittsburgh is also very large and even exceeds Philadelphia in rank by annual tonnage, because of the large volume of bulk coal shipped by barge down the Ohio River. Chester, downstream from Philadelphia, and Erie, the Great Lakes outlet on Lake Erie in the Erie Triangle, are smaller but still important ports.
Pennsylvania has been the site of some of the worst ecological disasters experienced in U.S. history:
* In 1889, the South Fork Dam, impounding a recreational mountain lake for sportsmen, burst after a heavy rain and destroyed the downstream factory town of Johnstown, killing over 2,200 inhabitants in the notorious Johnstown Flood (the town was later rebuilt and is a reasonably large community today in the central mountains).
* In 1961, an exposed seam of coal at Centralia, Pennsylvania caught fire and forced eventually almost the entire community to abandon the area; the coal fire is still burning today and it is estimated that it can burn 100 years more.
* In 1979, the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Incident near the state capital of Harrisburg, while not as destructive to the community, nevertheless cost close to $1 billion to clean up and changed the national public perception of nuclear power to a much less favorable viewpoint.
Before the state existed, the area was home to the Delaware (also known as Lenni Lenape), Susquehannock, Iroquois, Eriez, Shawnee, and other Native American tribes.
In 1643, the southeastern portion of the state, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, was settled by Sweden as part of New Sweden, with a capital city of New Gothenburg built on Tinicum Island in the Delaware River, south of present-day Philadelphia. Control later passed to the Netherlands as part of New Netherland, and then to England (later Great Britain).
On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted a land charter to William Penn for the area that now includes Pennsylvania. Penn then founded a colony there as a place of religious freedom for the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and named it for the Latin phrase meaning "Penn's woods".
Beginning in the early 1700's, large numbers of German immigrants began settling throughout Pennsylvania and for many generations, the German language dominated in many rural areas of the state. Individuals claiming German ancestry currently make up a majority of the ethnic composite of Pennsylvania.
A large tract of land north and west of Philadelphia, in Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware Counties, was settled by Welsh Quakers and called the "Welsh Tract". Even today many cities and towns in that area bear the names of Welsh municipalities.
The western portions of Pennsylvania were among disputed territory between the colonial British and French during the French and Indian War. The French established numerous fortifications in the area, including the pivotal Fort Duquesne on top of which the city of Pittsburgh was built.
The colony's reputation of religious freedom also attracted significant populations of German and Scots-Irish settlers who helped to shape colonial Pennsylvania and later went on to populate the neighboring states further west.
In 1704, the "three lower counties" of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex gained a separate legislature, and in 1710 a separate executive council, to form the new colony Delaware.
Pennsylvania and Delaware were two of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution of 1776. Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787 (five days after Delaware became the first).
The Battle of Gettysburg took place in Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg. Many historians consider this battle the major turning point of the Civil War. Dead soldiers from this battle rest at Gettysburg National Cemetery, site of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. oil (kerosene) industry was born in western Pennsylvania, which supplied the vast majority of U.S. kerosene for years thereafter. This caused the rise and fall of oil several boom towns.
During the 20th century, Pennsylvania's existing iron industries expanded into a major center of steel production. Shipbuilding and numerous other forms of manufacturing flourished in the eastern part of the state, and coal mining was also extremely important in many regions. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Pennsylvania received very large numbers of immigrants from Europe seeking work; dramatic, sometimes violent confrontations took place between organized labor and the state's industrial concerns.
Pennsylvania was hard-hit by the decline of the steel industry and other heavy U.S. industries during the late 20th century.
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