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.

Franklin County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Chambersburg
Year Organized: 1784
Square Miles: 772

Court House:

157 Lincoln Way East
County Courthouse
Chambersburg, PA 17201-2233

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Chambers, for whom it was named, founded Chambersburg, the county seat, in 1764.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on September 9, 1784 from part of Cumberland County and named for Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Chambers, for whom it was named, founded Chambersburg, the county seat, in 1764. It was incorporated as a borough on March 21, 1803.

Benjamin Chambers's settlement in 1730 was the first permanent settler community. The lower Cumberland Valley was included in a purchase from the Indians in October 1736, but this was the scene of heavy Indian fighting in the period 1756 to 1763. From 1837 on, the Cumberland Valley Railroad gave the county marketing opportunities. Franklin has always had an agricultural base, but its early iron furnaces lost out to competition elsewhere. Paper, lumber, and crushed stone, however, were successfully produced. The Confederate Army twice captured Chambersburg, and the second time, in July 1864, they burned it. In 1920, Franklin was the state's seventh ranked agricultural producer, and in 1992 it was fourth in receipts from livestock and tenth in crops. Dairying is especially successful. Farms cover 51.6 percent of the land.

Geography

A large part of Franklin County lies within the Cumberland Valley.

Neighboring Counties:

Juniata County (north)
Perry County (northeast)
Cumberland County (northeast)
Adams County (east)
Frederick County, Maryland (southeast)
Washington County, Maryland (south)
Fulton County (west)
Huntingdon County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Antrim	township
- Chambersburg (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- Charlestown	township
- Concord	township
- Fannett	township
- Greencastle	borough	Incorporated Area
- Greene	township
- Guilford	township
- Letterkenny	township
- Lurgan	township
- Marion	township
- Mercersburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Metal	township
- Mont Alto	borough	Incorporated Area
- Orrstown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Peters	township
- Quincy	township
- St. Thomas	township
- Waynesboro	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."