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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.

Washington County, Pennsylvania

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

County Seat: Washington
Year Organized: 1781
Square Miles: 857

Court House:

100 West Beau Street, Courthouse Square
County Courthouse
Washington, PA 15301-4432

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of George Washington.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 28, 1781 from part of Westmoreland County and named in honor of George Washington. Washington, the county seat, was laid out in 1781, incorporated as a borough on February 12, 1810, and chartered as a city in 1924.

Indian ownership was yielded to Pennsylvania by the "New Purchase" deed at Ft. Stanwix in 1768, but Virginia claimed southwestern Pennsylvania (all the way to Pittsburgh) until she yielded the argument in 1780. Scots-Irish led by three Presbyterian clergy, founded Buffalo, Amity, and Canonsburg, about 1775. One, the Rev. John McMillan, became a strong political leader. Indian raids lasted until the 1790s. This was a center of the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), of which David Bradford was the leader, but after that distilling declined. In time, sheep created prosperity, increasingly so with the spread of the efficient Merino breed between 1820 and 1840. The National Road led to the founding of Centerville, Claysville, and Beallsville, but the arrival of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Pittsburgh, in 1852, eclipsed the prosperity that the National Road's wagon route had stimulated. The opening of US Route 40 early in the twentieth century benefited Washington. Small railroads entered the county in the 1850s; coal mining grew after 1865 and the county is still one of the major coal producers. Natural gas was harnessed for sale in 1884, the same year oil was struck. Small steel mills began around 1900, and a glass industry flourished from the 1880s to the 1950s. Steel processing, steel products, and other metal products are strong businesses in the county. Today, Washington rivals Greene as top producing county for sheep and wool. Forty percent of the land is farmed, and the county is a significant producer of apples, cattle, and alfalfa and forage crops.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 861 square miles (2,230 km²).857 square miles (2,220 km²) of it is land and 4 square miles (10 km²) of it (0.45%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Beaver County (north)
Allegheny County (northeast)
Westmoreland County (east)
Fayette County (southeast)
Greene County (south)
Marshall County, West Virginia (southwest)
Ohio County, West Virginia (west)
Brooke County, West Virginia (west)
Hancock County, West Virginia (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Allenport	borough	Incorporated Area
- Amity	township
- Amwell	township
- Beallsville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Bentleyville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Blaine	township
- Buffalo	township
- Burgettstown	borough	Incorporated Area
- California	borough	Incorporated Area
- Canonsburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Carroll	township
- Cecil	township
- Charleroi	borough	Incorporated Area
- Chartiers	township
- Claysville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Coal Center	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cokeburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cross Creek	township
- Daisytown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Deemston	borough	Incorporated Area
- Donora	borough	Incorporated Area
- Dunlevy	borough	Incorporated Area
- East Bethlehem	township
- East Finley	township
- East Washington	borough	Incorporated Area
- Elco	borough	Incorporated Area
- Ellsworth	borough	Incorporated Area
- Fallowfield	township
- Finleyville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Green Hills	borough	Incorporated Area
- Hickory	township
- Houston	borough	Incorporated Area
- Lawrence	township
- Long Branch	borough	Incorporated Area
- Marianna	borough	Incorporated Area
- McDonald	borough	Incorporated Area
- Midway	borough	Incorporated Area
- Monongahela	city	Incorporated Area
- New Eagle	borough	Incorporated Area
- North Bethlehem	township
- North Charleroi	borough	Incorporated Area
- North Franklin	township
- North Strabane	township
- Roscoe	borough	Incorporated Area
- Smith	township
- South Franklin	township
- South Strabane	township
- Speers	borough	Incorporated Area
- Stockdale	borough	Incorporated Area
- Twilight	borough	Incorporated Area
- Union	township
- Washington (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- West Alexander	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Bethlehem	township
- West Finley	township
- West Middletown	borough	Incorporated Area
- West Pike Run	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."