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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.

Pike County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Milford
Year Organized: 1814
Square Miles: 547

Court House:

506 Broad Street
County Courthouse
Milford, PA 18337-1539

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for General Zebulon Pike.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 26, 1814, from part of Wayne County and named for General Zebulon Pike. Milford, the county seat, was incorporated as a borough on December 25, 1874, and probably named for Milford Haven in Wales.

Originally a remote section of Bucks County, the land that became Pike was first settled about 1700. Purchases from the Indians in 1749 and 1768 legitimized settlement, and an agreement with Connecticut in 1786 confirmed Pennsylvania's authority. Violence with Native Americans lasted through the Revolution. Milford was settled in 1796 and just kept growing. Millwrights and ferry masters were early settlers. Canals, beginning in 1827, made Pike a connecting point with New York, and an aqueduct was built to carry canal boats over the Delaware. Railroads arrived in 1848, and lumber was rafted out to Easton and Trenton. A tanning industry once flourished, and bluestone quarries were productive. The population grew with the lumbering industry, but by 1914 the stands of trees were exhausted. Few stayed on. Although rural, Pike is not a significant farming area. The summer tourist population, a feature for over a century, is often ten times the permanent population. Farms occupy only 1½ percent of the land. Many national leaders spent creative periods secluded in Pike: Charles Peirce, Dan Beard, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Thomas Edison, Zane Grey, and Horace Greeley, for example.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 567 square miles (1,468 km²), of which, 547 square miles (1,416 km²) of it is land and 20 square miles (51 km²) of it (3.50%) is water.

The terrain rises rapidly from the river valley in the east to the rolling foothills of the Poconos in the west. The highest point is one of two unnamed hills in Greene Township that top out at approximately 2,110 feet (643 m) above sea level. The lowest elevation is approximately 340 feet (103.6 m), at the confluence of the Bushkill and the Delaware.

Neighboring Counties:

Sullivan County, New York (north)
Orange County, New York (east)
Sussex County, New Jersey (southeast)
Monroe County (southwest)
Wayne County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Bushkill	township
- Delaware	township
- Dingman	township
- Greene	township
- Lackawaxen	township
- Matamoras	borough	Incorporated Area
- Milford (County Seat)	borough	Incorporated Area
- Paupack	township
- Shohola	township
- Westfall	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."