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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.

Mercer County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Mercer
Year Organized: 1800
Square Miles: 672

Court House:

5 Diamond Street
County Courthouse
Mercer, PA 16137-0000

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for General Hugh Mercer.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

It was created on March 12, 1800, from part of Allegheny County and named for General Hugh Mercer. It was attached to Crawford County until February 1804 when it was formally organized. Mercer, the county seat, was laid out in 1803 and incorporated as a borough on March 28, 1814.

Included in the Last Purchase of 1784, the land that became this county was intended to be Donation Land awarded to compensate Revolutionary veteran soldiers. Settlers slowly arrived in the 1790s, but the county was created before there was much population. The towns of Mercer (at first a tavern), Sharon, Greenville, and Grove City, all began between 1796 and 1798. Distilleries and grist and sawmills marked the early economy. A canal to the Allegheny River opened in 1834, and one to Erie in 1844. These stimulated coal and iron mining. The low quality iron ore soon was abandoned, but Mercer's famous block coal sold well. Railroads began to arrive in 1864. Using the block coal, blast furnaces began in 1838, and the Sharon Iron Company began a rolling mill and foundry in 1851. Iron rails, nails, and bars were the main products until the industry was jolted by the Panic of 1873. The first steel mill opened in 1887; the Sharon Steel works in 1896. After World War II, the Army's Camp Reynolds was turned into an industrial park. Pymatuning Dam in 1934 and Shenango Dam in 1967 rearranged the county's topography. Sheep and dairy farming persist, some on it on Amish farms. Farms cover 42 percent of the county, and oats and sheep are produced in abundance.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 683 square miles (1,768 km²), of which, 672 square miles (1,740 km²) of it is land and 11 square miles (28 km²) of it (1.58%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Crawford County (north)
Venango County (east)
Butler County (southeast)
Lawrence County (south)
Mahoning County, Ohio (southwest)
Trumbull County, Ohio (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Clark	borough	Incorporated Area
- Deer Creek	township
- Delaware	township
- East Lackawannock	township
- Farrell	city	Incorporated Area
- Findley	township
- Fredonia	borough	Incorporated Area
- French Creek	township
- Greene	township
- Greenville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Grove City	borough	Incorporated Area
- Hempfield	township
- Hermitage	city	Incorporated Area
- Jackson Center	borough	Incorporated Area
- Jamestown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lackawannock	township
- Lake	township
- Mercer (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- New Lebanon	borough	Incorporated Area
- New Vernon	township
- Otter Creek	township
- Pine	township
- Pymatuning	township
- Salem	township
- Sandy Creek	township
- Sandy Lake	borough	Incorporated Area
- Sharon	city	Incorporated Area
- Sharpsville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Sheakleyville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Shenango	township
- South Pymatuning	township
- Stoneboro	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Middlesex	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Salem	township
- Wheatland	borough	Incorporated Area
- Wilmington	township
- Wolf Creek	township
- Worth	township

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resource Guide

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our 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."

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