Erie

Summit Township, PA · est. 1946

Pennsylvania's only Great Lakes port grew out of the Erie Triangle, a strip of Lake Erie shoreline the state acquired in 1792 to gain a harbor. Andrew Ellicott and William Irvine surveyed the town in 1795 on a site layered with earlier French, British, and American forts. Here in 1813 Oliver Hazard Perry assembled the fleet that would sail to victory in the Battle of Lake Erie.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

In the spring of 1813, with the War of 1812 raging on the Great Lakes, American shipwrights raced to build a fleet at the foot of this street in Erie. The vessels launched here — among them the Lawrence, the Niagara, and the Ariel — carried Oliver Hazard Perry to his famous victory at the Battle of Lake Erie that September. Warehouses, a blockhouse, and a lookout once clustered along this shore to guard and supply the yard.

Erie, PA · est. 1981

Erie County was carved from Allegheny County on March 12, 1800, taking its name from Lake Erie and, through it, from the Erie Indians who once lived along its shores. The county seat, laid out in 1795, grew into a bustling Great Lakes port and became a city in 1851. During the War of 1812, ships of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's fleet were built here before winning the decisive 1813 Battle of Lake Erie.

Millcreek Township, PA · est. 1946

Long before highways, travelers crossed this high ground on the Presque Isle Portage, the carrying-path that linked Lake Erie to the headwaters flowing toward the Ohio. It formed part of the older Venango Trail worn by Native people through the forests of northwestern Pennsylvania. In 1753 the French widened an Indian path into their military French Road, and the modern highway still shadows and departs from that ancient route here.