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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.

Fayette County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Uniontown
Year Organized: 1783
Square Miles: 790

Court House:

61 East Main Street
County Courthouse
Uniontown, PA 15401-3514

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of the Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de la Fayette (or Lafayette) (6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834), a French military officer born in the province of Auvergne in south central France. Lafayette was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a leader of the Garde Nationale during the French Revolution.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on September 26, 1783, from part of Westmoreland County and named in honor of the Marquis de la Fayette. In 1825 Lafayette visited the county as Albert Gallatin's guest and addressed the public in Brownsville. Uniontown, the county seat, was laid out about 1776 as Beason's-town and later renamed in allusion to the Federal Union. It was incorporated as a borough on April 4, 1796 and as a city on December 19, 1913.

Wendell Brown and Christopher Gist settled in the area around 1752. Washington's Fort Necessity campaign occurred in 1754, and Braddock's army passed through the next year. Indian raids continued until 1783. Brownsville developed from a military post, Fort Burd. From 1818 to 1852 the National or Cumberland Road brought prosperity, ending when the Pennsylvania Railroad connected with Pittsburgh and bypassed Fayette. The first iron furnace was fired in 1789. Brownsville was an early boat building center, and the glass industry originally flourished in the county. The coke industry began with the first beehive oven in 1841. Connellsville coking coal had superior chemical qualities. Henry Clay Frick's fortune began with coke in 1870. By the 1920s, beehive ovens were obsolete and much of the coke manufacturing moved to the sites of the steel mills, but beehives were revived in World War II. By 1950 the coal under the county was gone, and severe unemployment and depression began. Farms cover 23 percent of the county's land today. Bituminous coal, mined entirely by surface operations, is still produced.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 798 square miles (2,067 km²), of which, 790 square miles (2,046 km²) of it is land and 8 square miles (20 km²) of it (0.98%) is water. Many coal mines are located within the county.

Neighboring Counties:

Westmoreland County (north)
Somerset County (east)
Garrett County, Maryland (southeast)
Preston County, West Virginia (south)
Monongalia County, West Virginia (southwest)
Greene County (west)
Washington County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Allison	township
- Belle Vernon	borough	Incorporated Area
- Brownsville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Bullskin	township
- Connellsville	city	Incorporated Area
- Dawson	borough	Incorporated Area
- Dunbar	borough	Incorporated Area
- Everson	borough	Incorporated Area
- Fairchance	borough	Incorporated Area
- Farmington	township
- Fayette City	borough	Incorporated Area
- Georges	township
- German	township
- Henry Clay	township
- Lower Tyrone	township
- Markleysburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Masontown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Menallen	township
- New Salem	borough	Incorporated Area
- Newell	borough	Incorporated Area
- Ohiopyle	borough	Incorporated Area
- Oliver	township
- Perryopolis	borough	Incorporated Area
- Point Marion	borough	Incorporated Area
- Redstone	township
- Rostraver	township
- Saltlick	township
- Smithfield	borough	Incorporated Area
- South Connellsville	borough	Incorporated Area
- South Union	township
- Springhill	township
- Stewart	township
- Uniontown (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Upper Tyrone	township
- Vanderbilt	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Brownsville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Wharton	township
- White	township

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."