e-ReferenceDesk's College and 50 State Learning Resource Guide

Find Online Colleges

Find Campus Colleges

Pennsylvania State...

Pennsylvania

Choose a County

Adams, Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Berks, Blair, Bradford, Bucks, Butler, Cambria, Cameron, Carbon, Centre, Chester, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Crawford, Cumberland, Dauphin, Delaware, Elk, Erie, Fayette, Forest, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniata, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lawrence, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Mifflin, Monroe, Montgomery, Montour, Northampton, Northumberland, Perry, Philadelphia, Pike, Potter, Schuylkill, Snyder, Somerset, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Westmoreland, Wyoming, York

Pennsylvania Counties

Click Image to Enlarge

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.

Columbia County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Bloomsburg
Year Organized: 1813
Square Miles: 486

Court House:

P.O. Box 380
County Courthouse
Bloomsburg, PA 17815-0380

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Its name is a poetic allusion to America.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 22, 1813 from part of Northumberland County. Its name is a poetic allusion to America.

Bloomsburg, the county seat since November 30, 1847, was incorporated as a town on March 4, 1870, and is the only incorporated town in the state. Its name comes from Bloom Township, which was named for Samuel Bloom, a commissioner of Northumberland County. Danville, the county seat from 1813 to 1846, is now the seat of Montour County.

Native American communities had long lived here along the Susquehanna River, and the first white settlement was south of the river. Berwick was laid out in 1783. As a North Branch Canal depot and then a railroad station, Catawissa grew and served a thriving farm region. Anthracite mining and a lumber boom arose but, like Columbia's farming, yielded to competition in the 1930s. Abandoned deep coal mines have burned for decades beneath the town of Centralia. ACF's railroad car complex and Bloomsburg's silk and carpet works prospered until the national trend toward deindustrialization began in recent decades. ACF manufactured tanks during World War II. The county's farming has emphasized fruit and field crops; in 1992 Columbia ranked 37th among all 67 counties in value of farm crops. Farms cover 37 percent of the county's area. There were Underground Railroad stations at Berwick and Millville. Some of the accused Molly Maguires were tried in Bloomsburg in 1877.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 490 square miles (1,269 km²), of which, 486 square miles (1,258 km²) of it is land and 4 square miles (11 km²) of it (0.87%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Sullivan County (north)
Luzerne County (east)
Schuylkill County (south)
Northumberland County (southwest)
Montour County (west)
Lycoming County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Benton	borough	Incorporated Area
- Berwick	borough	Incorporated Area
- Bloomsburg (County Seat)	town	Incorporated Area
- Briar Creek	borough	Incorporated Area
- Catawissa	borough	Incorporated Area
- Centralia	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cleveland	township
- Fishing Creek	township
- Greenwood	township
- Hemlock	township
- Locust	township
- Main	township
- Mayberry	township
- Millville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Newlin	township
- North Centre	township
- Orange	township
- Orangeville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Pine	township
- Roaring Creek	township
- Scott	township
- South Centre	township
- Stillwater	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."