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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.

Cambria County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Ebensburg
Year Organized: 1804
Square Miles: 688

Court House:

200 South Center Street
County Courthouse
Ebensburg, PA 15931-1947

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Cambria is an ancient name for Wales.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 26, 1804, from parts of Huntingdon, Somerset, and Bedford Counties and named for Cambria Township of Somerset County. Cambria is an ancient name for Wales. It was attached to Somerset County until 1807. Ebensburg, the county seat was incorporated as a borough on January 15, 1825 and named by Reverend Rees Lloyd for his deceased eldest son, Eben.

First permanent settlement was on the site of Loretto in 1788, and population growth was very slow until the 1830s. Then came the beginnings of coal mining (1825), the Allegheny Portage Railroad (1834), iron production (1841), and the Pennsylvania Railroad (1854). Always a large bituminous producer—today about seventh in the state—the county's iron ore was once also worth mining. Cambria Iron Works were formed in 1852 and bought out by Bethlehem Steel in 1922. The area witnessed pioneer projects in the Bessemer method and the open-hearth steel making processes, and in rolling steel rails. Disasters recurred: the Johnstown floods of 1889 and 1936, and mine disasters in 1902 (Johnstown), 1922 (Spangler), and 1940 (Portage). Labor unions made little progress in Cambria until the passage of the federal Wagner Act in 1937. Because it was so strongly committed to heavy industry, deindustrialization has been pronounced in Cambria since the 1970s. Welsh, Irish, and German groups were among the pre-industrial population, and the Russian prince-priest Demetrius Gallitzin ministered at Loretto from 1799 to 1829. Industrial employment resulted in the appearance of a medley of European ethnic groups.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 693 square miles (1,796 km²), of which, 688 square miles (1,782 km²) of it is land and 5 square miles (14 km²) of it (0.78%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Clearfield County (north)
Blair County (east)
Bedford County (southeast)
Somerset County (south)
Westmoreland County (southwest)
Indiana County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Adams	township
- Ashville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Barr	township
- Blacklick	township
- Cambria	township
- Carrolltown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cassandra	borough	Incorporated Area
- Chest	township
- Chest Springs	borough	Incorporated Area
- Conemaugh	township
- Cresson	borough	Incorporated Area
- Croyle	township
- Dean	township
- East Carroll	township
- East Conemaugh	borough	Incorporated Area
- East Taylor	township
- Ebensburg (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- Ehrenfeld	borough	Incorporated Area
- Elder	township
- Gallitzin	borough	Incorporated Area
- Geistown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Glasgow	borough	Incorporated Area
- Hastings	borough	Incorporated Area
- Johnstown	city	Incorporated Area
- Lilly	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lorain	borough	Incorporated Area
- Loretto	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lower Yoder	township
- Middle Taylor	township
- Munster	township
- Nanty-Glo	borough	Incorporated Area
- Northern Cambria	borough	Incorporated Area
- Patton	borough	Incorporated Area
- Portage	borough	Incorporated Area
- Reade	township
- Sankertown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Scalp Level	borough	Incorporated Area
- South Fork	borough	Incorporated Area
- Southmont	borough	Incorporated Area
- Stonycreek	township
- Summerhill	borough	Incorporated Area
- Tunnelhill	borough	Incorporated Area
- Upper Yoder	township
- Vintondale	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Carroll	township
- West Taylor	township
- Westmont	borough	Incorporated Area
- Wilmore	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."