Cost of Living in Pennsylvania

From Penn's charter to the State House

England's King Charles II granted William Penn the charter that created Pennsylvania in 1681. Penn held full legal title to the land under English law, yet he insisted on paying American Indians for their land claims, starting with a first purchase in 1682.

In 1787 the Constitutional Convention met in the Pennsylvania State House, the building now called Independence Hall and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The state's size, wealth and influence made its own ratifying convention the focus of national attention, and supporters of the Constitution carried the vote 46 to 23.

From steel mills to health care

From 1875 to 1980 southwestern Pennsylvania was, in the National Park Service's words, the Steel Making Capital of the World, and its mills made the steel for the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building. Many of those mill sites have since been dismantled. In 2024 health care and social assistance was the state's largest private industry, with about one in five private-sector jobs, ahead of retail and manufacturing.

Snowbelt winters by Lake Erie

How much snow you get depends on where you settle. Over 1991 to 2020 Philadelphia's airport averaged 23.1 inches a year and Pittsburgh's 44.1, while Erie's averaged 104.3. A lake-effect storm off Lake Erie that began on Thanksgiving Day 2024 left two to five feet of snow across the snowbelt of Northwest Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio in five days.

Valley Forge and Gettysburg

George Washington and the Continental Army spent the winter of 1777 to 1778 at Valley Forge. The Union victory at Gettysburg, the Civil War's bloodiest battle and a turning point in the war, inspired Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.