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PENNSYLVANIA,
which but for a small stretch on Lake Erie
is the only landlocked state in the
northeast, was explored by the Dutch in
the early 1600s, settled by the Swedes
forty years later, and claimed by the
British in 1664. Charles II of England,
who owed a debt to the Penn family, rid
himself of the potentially troublesome
young William Penn, an enthusiastic
advocate of religious freedom, by granting
him land in the colony in 1682. Penn Jr
immediately established a “holy
experiment” of “brotherly” love and
tolerance, naming the state for his father
and setting a good example by signing a
peaceful cohabitation treaty with the
Native Americans. Most of the early
agricultural settlers were religious
refugees: Quakers like Penn himself,
Mennonites from Germany and Switzerland,
and Irish Catholics.
“The
keystone state” was crucial in the
development of the US. Politicians and
thinkers like Benjamin Franklin
congregated in Philadelphia – home of both
the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution – and were prominent in
articulating the ideas behind the
Revolution. Later, the battle in
Gettysburg, south Pennsylvania – best
remembered for Abraham Lincoln’s immortal
Gettysburg Address – marked a
turning point in the Civil War.
Pennsylvania was also vital industrially:
Pittsburgh, in the west, was the world’s
leading steel producer in the nineteenth
century, and nearly all the nation’s
anthracite coal is still mined here.
The two
great urban centers of Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh, both lively and
vibrant tourist destinations, are at
opposite ends of the state. The three
hundred miles between them, though
predominantly agricultural, are
topographically diverse. There are over
one hundred state parks, with green
rolling countryside in the east, brooding
forests in the west, and in the northeast,
the rivers, lakes and valleys of the
Poconos. Lancaster County, home to
traditional Amish farmers, and the
Gettysburg battlefield both heave with
busloads of day-trippers, while the
Hershey chocolate factory, minutes away
from Harrisburg, the capital, draws
thousands of cocoa-loving visitors.
Click here to go to
Pennsylvania State web site |
