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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.

Elk County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Ridgway
Year Organized: 1843
Square Miles: 829

Court House:

P.O. Box 448
County Courthouse Annex
Ridgway, PA 15853-0448

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for the elk that roamed the county.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Elk County was created on April 18, 1843, from parts of Jefferson, Clearfield, and McKean Counties and named for the elk that roamed the county. Ridgway, the county seat, was laid out in 1833 and named for Jacob Ridgway, a local landowner. It was incorporated as a borough on February 15, 1881.

Land speculation companies owned this area after it was acquired by Pennsylvania at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1784—the "Last Purchase." In 1825, a Smethport to Milesburg Turnpike was incorporated, and a sawmill opened in Ridgway the next year. Lumber was the basis of the early economy, logs being floated to cities by the natural waterways. Railroads began to appear in 1864, and by 1890 the county produced coal and oil. Today, powdered metal, paper, and carbon are produced. Elk is one of the four counties that have large areas lying within the Allegheny National Forest. The farming area is only 3½ percent of the county. Although the indigenous elk population was hunted to extinction, a herd introduced from strains found in the western states now flourishes. Elk was the first county to have land designated for state game. The original settlers were from upper New York State and New England. Northern European immigrants then appeared, and around 1900 immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 832 square miles (2,155 km²), of which, 829 square miles (2,146 km²) of it is land and 4 square miles (9 km²) of it (0.43%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

McKean County (north)
Cameron County (east)
Clearfield County (south)
Jefferson County (southwest)
Forest County (west)
Warren County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Benezette	township
- Highland	township
- Horton	township
- Jay	township
- Johnsonburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Jones	township
- Millstone	township
- Ridgway (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- St. Marys	city	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."