Erie is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in Pennsylvania and the most populous in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 as of the 2020 census. The Erie metropolitan area had a population of 270,876 in 2020. Erie is about 80 miles (130 km) from Buffalo, 90 miles (140 km) from Cleveland, and 120 miles (190 km) from Pittsburgh.
The city takes its name from the Native American Erie people, who inhabited the area until the mid-17th century. Its nicknames include "Gem City", a reference to its fine natural harbor, the "Gem of the Great Lakes"; and more recently, "Flagship City", from a local marketing effort to play up the homeport of Oliver Hazard Perry's flagship Niagara.
Part of the Rust Belt, Erie has seen manufacturing decline as a share of its economy, while insurance, healthcare, higher education, technology, service industries, and tourism have grown. Like the other Great Lakes port cities, Erie is accessible to the oceans via the Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River network in Canada. The local climate is humid, four-seasonal, and snowy, with warm summers and harsh winters, owing to its southern lakeshore location.
History
Indigenous peoples occupied the shoreline and bluffs in this area for thousands of years, taking advantage of the rich resources. Sommerheim Park Archaeological District in Millcreek Township, west of the city, includes artifacts from the Archaic period in the Americas and the early and middle Woodland Period, roughly a span from 8,000 BCE to 500 CE.
Europeans first arrived as settlers in the region when the French constructed Fort Presque Isle near present-day Erie in 1753, as part of their effort to defend New France against the encroaching British colonists. The name of the fort refers to the peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, now protected as Presque Isle State Park. The French term presque-isle means "almost an island". When the French abandoned the fort in 1760 during the French and Indian War in the Seven Years' War, it was the last post they held west of Niagara River. The British established a garrison at the fort at Presque Isle that same year, three years before the end of the French and Indian War.
Erie is in what was the disputed Erie Triangle, a tract of land comprising 202,187 acres in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania fronting Lake Erie that was claimed after the American Revolutionary War by the newly formed states of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, as part of its Western Reserve, and Massachusetts.
18th century
The Iroquois claimed ownership of present-day Erie. On January 9, 1789, a conference was arranged during which representatives from the Iroquois signed a deed relinquishing their ownership of the land in exchange for $2,000 from Pennsylvania and $1,200 from the federal government. Seneca Nation separately settled land claims against Pennsylvania in February 1791 for the sum of $800. It became a part of Pennsylvania on March 3, 1792, after Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York relinquished their rights to the land and sold the land to Pennsylvania for 75 cents per acre or a total of $151,640.25 in continental certificates.
The General Assembly of Pennsylvania commissioned the surveying of land near Presque Isle through an act passed on April 18, 1795. Andrew Ellicott, who completed Pierre Charles L'Enfant's survey of Washington, D.C., and helped resolve the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, arrived to begin the survey and lay out the plan for the city in June 1795. The initial settlement of the area began that year. Lt. Colonel Seth Reed and his family moved to the Erie area from Geneva, New York; they were Yankees from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. They became the first European-American settlers of Erie in what is now Presque Isle.
19th century
President James Madison began the construction of a naval fleet during the War of 1812 to contest control of the Great Lakes with the British. Daniel Dobbins of Erie and Noah Brown of Boston were notable shipbuilders who led the construction of four schooner−rigged gunboats and two brigs. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry arrived from Rhode Island and led the squadron to success in the historic Battle of Lake Erie.
Erie was a significant hub for shipbuilding, fishing, and railroads during the mid-19th century. The city was the site where three sets of track gauges met. Although the delays caused cargo problems for commerce and travel, they created much-needed local jobs in Erie. When officials proposed a standardized gauge, the change threatened those jobs and the rail hub's significance. During the resulting Erie Gauge War, Erie's citizens—led by the mayor—set fire to bridges, tore up tracks, and rioted to prevent the standardization.
20th and 21st centuries
On August 3, 1915, the Mill Creek flooded downtown Erie. A culvert, or a tunnel, was blocked by debris and collapsed. A four-block reservoir, caused by torrential downpours, had formed behind it. The resulting deluge destroyed 225 houses and killed 36 people. After the flood, Mayor Miles Brown Kitts had the Mill Creek directed into another, larger culvert, constructed underneath more than 2 miles (3.2 km) of the city, before emptying into Presque Isle Bay on the city's lower east side.
Erie continued to grow for the first half of the 20th century, due to its strong manufacturing base. The city attracted numerous waves of European immigrants for industrial jobs. Erie was considered a wet city during the Prohibition Era in the United States. The city's economy declined in the latter part of the 20th century as industrial restructuring led to job losses in the area. Analysts from institutions such as the Brookings Institution, the Federal Reserve, and regional media like WESA FM classify the Erie region as part of the Rust Belt. The importance of American manufacturing, U.S. steel and coal production, and commercial fishing began to decline gradually, resulting in a significant population downturn in the 1970s.
With the advent of the automobile age after World War II and government subsidies for highway construction, thousands of residents left Erie for suburbs such as Millcreek Township, which now has 55,000 residents. This caused a decline in downtown retail businesses, some of which moved to the suburbs. Reflecting this perceived decline, Erie is occasionally referred to by residents as "The Mistake on the Lake" or "Dreary Erie". Downtown Erie has undergone a resurgence in the early 2020s with the opening of Flagship City Food Hall and Flagship City Public Market.
Erie won the All-America City Award in 1972 and was a finalist in 1961, 1994, 1995, and 2009. In 2012, Erie hosted the Perry 200, a commemoration celebrating 200 years of peace between Britain, America, and Canada following the War of 1812 and Battle of Lake Erie.
Geography
Erie is situated in Northwestern Pennsylvania at 42°6′52″N 80°4′34″W / 42.11444°N 80.07611°W (42.114507, -80.076213), on the southern shore of Lake Erie across from the Canadian province of Ontario. It is 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Cleveland, Ohio, 90 miles (140 km) southwest of Buffalo, and 128 miles (206 km) north of Pittsburgh. Erie's bedrock is Devonian shale and siltstone, overlain by glacial tills and stratified drift. Stream drainage in the city flows northward into Lake Erie, then through Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence River, and out to the Atlantic Ocean. South of Erie is a drainage divide, beyond which most of the streams in western Pennsylvania flow south into the Allegheny or Ohio Rivers. Lake Erie is about 571 ft (174 m) above sea level, while the city of Erie is about 728 ft (222 m) above sea level.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 19.3 square miles (49.9 km2), with 19.1 square miles (49.4 km2) being land and the remaining 0.2 square miles (0.5 km2), or 1.03%, being water. Presque Isle State Park (referred to by locals as "the Peninsula" or simply "the beach"), is a recurving sandspit peninsula that stretches north into Lake Erie, providing a fine, natural harbor for Erie and offers 7 miles (11 km) of public beaches, wetlands, and fishing sites.
Erie fronts Presque Isle Bay and is laid out in a grid surrounding Perry Square in the downtown area. The downtown area is separated from the waterfront by the Bayfront Parkway. The tallest structure in Erie is St. Peter Cathedral at 265 ft (81 m), and the tallest building is Renaissance Centre at 198 ft (60 m). Historically, Erie had numerous ethnic neighborhoods, including Little Italy, located on the west side of Erie, featuring the West 18th Street commercial corridor. South of 38th Street, the grid gives way to curvilinear roads of post-1970 suburban development. Millcreek Township and upper Peach Street in Summit Township include the Erie metropolitan area's newer developments.
Post-industrial redevelopment of Erie's waterfront aimed at recreational and tourism uses include the Bayfront Parkway, Niagara Pier, Perry's Landing Marina, Liberty Park & Amphitheater, Bayfront Convention Center, hotels, and Dobbins Landing, which features the Bicentennial Tower at its northern end. On the east side of the bayfront, the Erie Maritime Museum and the Erie County main library (third-largest in Pennsylvania) host the USS Niagara. Docks and marinas fill the freshwater shoreline in between.
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Erie falls within either a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa) if the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm is used or a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) if the −3 °C (27 °F) isotherm is used. It is located in the snow belt that stretches from Cleveland to Syracuse and Watertown; winters are moderately cold, with heavy lake-effect snow, but also with occasional stretches of mild weather that cause accumulated snow to melt. The city experiences a full range of weather events, including snow, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The city's lakeside location helps to temper summer heat, with an average of 4 days with highs at or above 90 °F (32 °C) annually, and the highest temperature ever recorded was 100 °F (38 °C) on June 25, 1988. An average of 3 days have lows of 0 °F (−18 °C) or colder annually, and the lowest temperature ever recorded was −18 °F (−28 °C) on January 19, 1994, and February 16, 2015.
Erie is third on The Daily Beast's list of snowiest places in the United States, averaging 78.7 inches (200 cm); however, the 1991–2020 normal seasonal snowfall is 104.3 inches (265 cm). Average annual snowfall in the decade 2010-2019 was 100.7 inches (256 cm). The adverse winter conditions caused USAir Flight 499 to overrun the runway at Erie International Airport on February 21, 1986, and caused whiteouts that were responsible for a 50-car pile-up on Interstate 90 on January 25, 2007.
The coldest maximum temperature on record was −4 °F (−20 °C) in 1994 and the average coldest maximum between 1991 and 2020 was 13 °F (−11 °C). The warmest overnight low on record was 82 °F (28 °C) once in 1918 and another time during the 1936 North American heat wave. On average, the warmest low of the year is 75 °F (24 °C).
On December 24 and 25, 2017, Erie received 53 inches (135 cm) of snowfall, breaking a record for the largest two-day snowfall anywhere in Pennsylvania. By the close of the 2017–2018 snow season, Erie had recorded 198.5 in (5.04 m) of snow, its snowiest season on record, breaking the previous record of 149.1 in (3.79 m) inches set in 2000–2001 by a large margin.
The hardiness zone is now 7a along the lakeshore and 6b in the remainder of the city.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, Erie had a population of 94,831. The median age was 35.8 years. 22.1% of residents were under the age of 18 and 15.7% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 94.5 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 92.3 males age 18 and over.
100.0% of residents lived in urban areas, while 0.0% lived in rural areas.
There were 39,057 households in Erie, of which 26.1% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 28.7% were married-couple households, 25.5% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 36.7% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 37.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
There were 43,625 housing units, of which 10.5% were vacant. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.8% and the rental vacancy rate was 8.4%.
2010 census
As of the 2010 United States census, 101,786 people, 40,913 households, and 22,915 families were residing in the city. Its 44,790 housing units averaged a vacancy rate of 8%. Erie has long been declining in population due to the departure of factories and dependent businesses. The city has lost about 40,000 people since the early 1960s, allowing Allentown to claim the position as Pennsylvania's third-largest city behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.