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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.

McKean County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Smethport
Year Organized: 1804
Square Miles: 982

Court House:

500 West Main Street
County Courthouse
Smethport, PA 16749-1144

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Governor Thomas McKean.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 26, 1804 from part of Lycoming County and named for Governor Thomas McKean. It was attached to Centre County until 1814, when it was combined with Potter County to elect commissioners jointly, and was also attached to Lycoming County for judicial and election purposes. It was formally organized in 1826. Smethport, the county seat, was laid out in 1807, and named in honor of Raymond and Theodore de Smeth, Amsterdam bankers. It was incorporated as a borough on February 11, 1853.

Although Indian leaders yielded the land at the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the "Last Purchase" (1784), distance and dense forest delayed settlement. After 1798 settlers from New York arrived, many originally from New England. Except for Sergeant Township, all early settlements were on the Allegheny River and its tributaries. Lumbering controlled the economy and settlement spread with each new cutting operation. Bradford grew from a lumber camp. Deep drilling brought an oil boom in 1871, lasting two decades, and the water injection method revived production for another boom, 1930 to 1950. Railroads arrived in the late 1860s to revive the lumber industry, and tanning and wood chemical industries (turpentine, creosote, etc.) flourished while the forests lasted. But by 1925 little timber remained. The Civil War leader Thomas Leiper Kane did much to develop the area. The county led the nation in natural gas production from 1895 to 1905. A lumber industry revived after World War II using managed forest systems, and there is a little crude oil production. Other products today include motor oil, Zippo Lighters, electronics, corrugated boxes, furniture, glass containers and construction blocks, and oil and gas pipes and equipment. The county's success is attested to by the value added to the economy from its manufactures, which increased 66 percent between 1987 and 1992. Commercial forest lands and the National Forest cover much of the county; only 7 percent of the area is farmed.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 984 square miles (2,549 km²), of which, 982 square miles (2,542 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (7 km²) of it (0.26%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Cattaraugus County, New York (north)
Allegany County, New York (northeast)
Potter County (east)
Cameron County (southeast)
Elk County (south)
Forest County (southwest)
Warren County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Annin	township
- Bradford	city	Incorporated Area
- Ceres	township
- Corydon	township
- Eldred	borough	Incorporated Area
- Foster	township
- Kane	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lafayette	township
- Lewis Run	borough	Incorporated Area
- Mount Jewett	borough	Incorporated Area
- Norwich	township
- Otto	township
- Port Allegany	borough	Incorporated Area
- Sergeant	township
- Smethport (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- Wetmore	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."