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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.

Dauphin County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Harrisburg
Year Organized: 1785
Square Miles: 525

Court House:

P.O. Box 1295
County Courthouse
Harrisburg, PA 17108-1295

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for the Dauphin, the title of nobility given to the eldest sons of kings of France.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 4, 1785, from part of Lancaster County, and named for the Dauphin, the title of nobility given to the eldest sons of kings of France. Harrisburg, the county seat, was named for its founder, John Harris, and was incorporated as a borough on April 13, 1791. It was chartered as a city on March 19, 1860.

John Harris's trading post stood on the Susquehanna as early as 1720. Presbyterian groups at Paxton and Manada Gap were the earliest settlers, but German Lutherans formed the Hummelstown and Middletown communities in the 1760s. The Paxton Boys movement of 1763–1764 slaughtered helpless Indians and tried to intimidate the provincial government into providing more defense on the frontier and more legislative representation. The State's capitol was moved from Lancaster to Harrisburg in 1812, and the next year Lebanon County was created from Dauphin's eastern townships. In the mid-nineteenth century Dauphin was a canal and railroad center. Later, steel mills went up in Steelton. In Middletown, American Tube and Iron Co. flourished, and railroad cars were made there. Today, Milton Hershey's industrial legacy is still apparent and AMP is a national leader. Thirty percent of the land is farmed, and this is a leading county in sheep and poultry. In total value its farm products rank twenty-fifth among the state's sixty-seven counties.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 558 square miles (1,450 km2), of which, 525 square miles (1,360 km2) of it is land and 32 square miles (83 km2) of it (5.78%) is water. The county is bound to its western border by the Susquehanna River.

Neighboring Counties:

Northumberland County (north)
Schuylkill County (northeast)
Lebanon County (east)
Lancaster County (south)
York County (southwest)
Cumberland County (west)
Perry County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Berrysburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Dauphin	borough	Incorporated Area
- Elizabethville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Gratz	borough	Incorporated Area
- Halifax	borough	Incorporated Area
- Harrisburg (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Hummelstown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Londonderry	township
- Lower Paxton	township
- Lower Swatara	township
- Lykens	borough	Incorporated Area
- Middle Paxton	township
- Middletown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Millersburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Paxtang	borough	Incorporated Area
- Penbrook	borough	Incorporated Area
- Pillow	borough	Incorporated Area
- Reed	township
- Royalton	borough	Incorporated Area
- South Hanover	township
- Steelton	borough	Incorporated Area
- Swatara	township
- Upper Paxton	township
- West Hanover	township
- Wiconisco	township
- Williams	township
- Williamstown	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."