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Pennsylvania Counties

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Pennsylvania Counties

There are sixty-seven counties of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States of America. The city of Philadelphia is coterminous with Philadelphia County, and governmental functions have been consolidated since 1854.

Butler County, Pennsylvania

Butler County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Butler
Year Organized: 1800
Square Miles: 789

Court House:

124 W Diamond Street
County Courthouse
Butler, PA 16001-5780

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Richard Butler (April 1, 1743 – November 4, 1791), an officer in the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War who later died fighting American Indians in Ohio.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 12, 1800, from part of Allegheny County and named for General Richard Butler. It was attached to Allegheny County until 1803. Butler, the county seat, was laid out in 1803, incorporated as a borough on February 26, 1817, and as a second-class city on 7, 1918.

Made up of Donation and Depreciation lands that were intended to compensate Revolutionary War veterans, Butler was the scene of many disputes over land titles in its early years. Detmar Basse's Zelienople and John A. Roebling's Saxonburg were early manufacturing centers.

The utopian Harmony Society resided here from 1804 to 1814. Butler was an Underground Railroad station. An oil boom occurred briefly during the mid-1860s, followed by natural gas production. Bituminous coal mining later developed and is still strong. By World War II, the county was making railroad cars, military vehicles, rolled steel, glass, and gasoline. Defying the decline of industry and population that western Pennsylvania has seen since the 1960s, Butler goes right on producing light metal, rubber, printed, and optical items. The value added to the economy by Butler County's manufacturing increased by 50 percent between 1987 and 1992. Farming continues to be financially successful. The population growth is associated with Pittsburgh's residential population exodus.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 795 square miles (2,058 km²), of which, 789 square miles (2,042 km²) of it is land and 6 square miles (16 km²) of it (0.79%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Venango County (north)
Clarion County (northeast)
Armstrong County (east)
Westmoreland County (southeast)
Allegheny County (south)
Beaver County (west)
Lawrence County (west)
Mercer County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Adams	township
- Barkeyville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Bruin	borough	Incorporated Area
- Buffalo	township
- Butler (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Callery	borough	Incorporated Area
- Center	township
- Cherry	township
- Cherry Valley	borough	Incorporated Area
- Chicora	borough	Incorporated Area
- Connoquenessing	borough	Incorporated Area
- East Butler	borough	Incorporated Area
- Eau Claire	borough	Incorporated Area
- Evans City	borough	Incorporated Area
- Forward	township
- Harmony	borough	Incorporated Area
- Harrisville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Karns City	borough	Incorporated Area
- Mars	borough	Incorporated Area
- Muddy Creek	township
- Petrolia	borough	Incorporated Area
- Point	township
- Portersville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Prospect	borough	Incorporated Area
- Saxonburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Seven Fields	borough	Incorporated Area
- Slippery Rock	borough	Incorporated Area
- Valencia	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Liberty	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Sunbury	borough	Incorporated Area
- Worth	township
- Zelienople	borough	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."