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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.

Northumberland County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Sunbury
Year Organized: 1772
Square Miles: 460

Court House:

201 Market Street
Sunbury, PA 17801-3406

Etymology - Origin of County Name

It probably was named for the English county of the same name.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 21, 1772, from parts of Lancaster, Cumberland, Berks, Bedford, and Northampton Counties. It probably was named for the English county of the same name. Sunbury, the county seat was laid out in 1772, incorporated as a borough on March 24, 1797, and became a city in 1921. It was named for an English village near London.

The present county area is land acquired by purchases from Indians in 1749 and 1768, but until the formation of Lycoming County in 1795 it included a vast amount of north central Pennsylvania as far as the Allegheny River. Iroquois, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians once had sites along the Susquehanna River. Fort Augusta (at Sunbury) was a key point in frontier defense from 1756 to 1765, but permanent white settlement began in 1768. Tories and Indians chastised the population in 1778–1779.

The confluence of the East and West Branches of the Susquehanna made this a center for gathering lumber and other products to move south. Canals improved the arrangement. After 1835 rail cars carried anthracite coal to the river and the county became a mining leader in the 1850s. The older lumber and farming economy contrasted with the anthracite economy of Mt. Carmel and Shamokin; railroads rushed in to carry the coal directly to the east. The lumber industry was enlarged by Ario Pardee. The fourth largest anthracite producing county until 1952, Northumberland then rose to its present third place. Thomas Edison's electric lights in Sunbury in 1883 were a technical breakthrough paralleling Joseph Priestley's scientific discoveries, many of which were made in his Northumberland home. Shamokin was the center for agriculture in the central section of the county. Milton became the site of an American Car & Foundry (ACF) factory in the 1920s. County population has declined in each census since 1930, when it stood at 128,504. Silk, textiles, and cigars were once major products. Farms cover 43 percent of the land, and Northumberland is a leading county for producing chickens, swine, soybeans, and barley.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 477 square miles (1,236 km²), of which, 460 square miles (1,191 km²) of it is land and 17 square miles (45 km²) of it (3.66%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Lycoming County (north)
Montour County (northeast)
Columbia County (east)
Schuylkill County (southeast)
Dauphin County (south)
Perry County (southwest)
Juniata County (west)
Snyder County (west)
Union County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Anthony	township
- Coal	township
- Delaware	township
- East Cameron	township
- East Chillisquaque	township
- Herndon	borough	Incorporated Area
- Jordan	township
- Kulpmont	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lewis	township
- Little Mahanoy	township
- Lower Augusta	township
- Lower Mahanoy	township
- Marion Heights	borough	Incorporated Area
- McEwensville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Milton	borough	Incorporated Area
- Mount Carmel	borough	Incorporated Area
- Northumberland	borough	Incorporated Area
- Ralpho	township
- Riverside	borough	Incorporated Area
- Rockefeller	township
- Shamokin	city	Incorporated Area
- Snydertown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Sunbury (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Turbot	township
- Turbotville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Upper Augusta	township
- Upper Mahanoy	township
- Watsontown	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Cameron	township
- West Chillisquaque	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."