Place Information
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Armstrong County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2000 census, the population was 72,392. 2006 Census figures had the county's population at 70,096, which represents a 3% drop since 2000. It is located northeast of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. Armstrong County was added to the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2003. The county seat is Kittanning. The county was organized on March 12, 1800 from parts of Allegheny, Westmoreland and Lycoming Counties. It was named in honor of John Armstrong, who had represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress.
History
The County was named after Brigadier-General John Armstrong. Armstrong County is home to the City of Parker, an incorporated third-class city, which was an oil boom town with a population rumored to be approximately 20,000 in 1873, but now is the "Smallest City in America" with a population under 800. Parker is located in the extreme northwest part of the county. Iron was made in the Brady's Bend area of the county twenty years before there was a foundry in Pittsburgh doing so. Ford City is home to the plate-glass industry, as John Ford created the company which later became Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Kittanning once boasted more millionnaires than anywhere else in Pennsylvania during the 1880s. Leechburg was the first place in the United States to use natural gas for metallurgical purposes, in 1869. Natural gas was found while drilling for oil, and eventually introduced into the boilers and furnaces of Siberian Iron Works here. Freeport, Leechburg and Apollo were communities built along the Pennsylvania Canal, which passed through on the Allegheny and Kiskiminetas Rivers, at the southern border of the county. Timeline
Population History
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