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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.

Montour County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Danville
Year Organized: 1850
Square Miles: 131

Court House:

29 Mill Street
County Courthouse
Danville, PA 17821-1999

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Madame Montour, a woman of Indian and French descent who was prominent in the Indian affairs

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on May 3, 1850 from part of Columbia County and named for Madame Montour, a woman of Indian and French descent who was prominent in the Indian affairs. Danville, the county seat, was laid out in 1792 and incorporated as a borough on February 27, 1849. It had been the county seat of Columbia County from 1813 to 1846.

The Mahoning Creek area was settled beginning in 1769. Danville is named for Daniel Montgomery, son of early settler General William Montgomery. It had been Columbia County's seat until 1845, but when Bloomsburg usurped Columbia County Danville wanted a new county so it could once more be a county seat. Newspaper activist Valentine Best went to the legislature and pushed the creation through. Danville became a highway, canal, and then rail link on the North Branch route from Sunbury to Wilkes-Barre. Danville's Big Mill, eventually owned by Bethlehem Steel, made iron and steel from 1838 to 1938, Rails were a specialty—the first T-rails made in the United States were made here. In 1873 a national financial panic eclipsed the mill's future, it lost out in competition with Bessemer process and Lake Superior ore, and in 1896 it experienced a major explosion. But iron and steel specialties production continued until the end of World War II. Silk and shirt-making factories were productive from the early 1900s. Half of the county's area is farmed.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 132 square miles (343 km²), of which, 131 square miles (339 km²) of it is land and 2 square miles (4 km²) of it (1.17%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Lycoming County (north)
Columbia County (east)
Northumberland County (southwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Cooper	township
- Danville (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- Mahoning	township
- Valley	township
- Washingtonville	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Hemlock	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."