When someone claims to live in “central Pennsylvania,” what do they mean?
It could be the area around the state capital, the forests of the Pennsylvania Wilds, a small Rust Belt city, or the rolling fields of Dutch Country. Or maybe they live near Penn State University, in the county that’s got “center” right in the name (just spelled a little differently).
Central Pennsylvania’s nebulous definition can make efforts to talk about the region confusing — and occasionally contentious. While the descriptor sounds straightforward, it often doesn’t really tell you where someone is from, or what it’s like to live there.
To explore why central Pennsylvania is so hard to pin down and why it stokes such strong feelings, PA Local spoke with residents and researchers, read through hundreds of comments from readers, and consulted news archives, government websites, nonprofit filings, books, and maps.
Central Pennsylvania, the reporting found, is a vernacular region that’s long meant different things to different people. People across the commonwealth rely on the term — whether or not they feel it accurately reflects their community’s location and identity.
Sharon Nelson of Lancaster County grew up hearing the towns she’d lived in, East Petersburg and Mount Joy, referred to as part of “central Pennsylvania.” But when she left for Juniata College in Huntingdon — about 30 miles south of State College — the terminology began to feel odd.
At Juniata, Nelson was much closer to the middle of Pennsylvania on a map, and the area (which she now calls the “the real central Pa.”) felt markedly different from her hometown. There wasn’t a “bigger city” with tens of thousands of residents like Lancaster anchoring the area, she said, but rather smaller boroughs of a few thousand.
“We had to drive like two and a half hours to get there,” Nelson said of the trek from the Mount Joy area to Juniata. “And then I just thought it was such a misnomer, saying we were central Pennsylvania.”
A recent PA Local survey about Pennsylvania’s regions asked an open-ended question: “What region of Pennsylvania would you say you currently live in?” At least one respondent from each of 23 counties — ranging from Potter to Armstrong to Bedford to, yes, Lancaster — wrote “Central Pennsylvania” or “Central PA.” Six of those counties are classified as urban, per the Center for Rural Pennsylvania’s definition, and the other 17 are rural.
Responses from some of those counties, plus 13 others, included variations on the region, like north-central, south-central, eastern central, and west-central. That makes for a grand total of 36 counties — out of the state’s 67 — where at least some residents incorporate “central” into their labels.
Many comments on the survey — even from people who didn’t self-identify as central Pennsylvanians — singled out the region as tough to define, or offered strong thoughts about which areas truly are part of it.
“I feel like there are two separate Central PAs (one around Adams/York/Cumberland, one north of Harrisburg) that are distinct regions in my head but I would call both Central PA,” a respondent from Adams County wrote.
“Central PA does not extend to the northern and southern borders,” said an Allegheny County resident.
“Anyone who says Central Pa doesn’t include Cumberland County is just wrong,” wrote someone who just moved from the area to Montgomery County. “Looks weird geographically, but we all say we’re from Central Pa.”
“Anyone who assumes Lancaster is in Central PA needs to look at a map and get some glasses,” wrote one Centre County resident.
Organization names also show the term’s wide range. Around 200 nonprofits have “central Pennsylvania” in their names or have designated chapters for the region, and they’re not all concentrated in the same area.
The Central Pennsylvania Humane Society, for example, is located in Altoona and serves Blair and surrounding counties. But that’s not to be confused with the Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance, a nonprofit based over 100 miles east in Mechanicsburg.
Some organizations named after the region serve huge tracts of the state. The Central Pennsylvania Food Bank is headquartered in Harrisburg and serves a 27-county area that stretches all the way from the New York border to the Mason-Dixon line.
United Cerebral Palsy of Central PA similarly covers a big stretch of the commonwealth. It used to be called “UCP Capital Area” and “served only Dauphin, Cumberland, and Perry Counties for many years,” CEO Janeen Latin told PA Local. When it had the opportunity to add services in more areas, it adopted a more expansive name too.
The Central PA Chamber of Commerce made a similar move a few decades ago. To “accurately represent” who it serves, in 2004 the chamber changed its name from the Milton Area Chamber of Commerce to its current one, according to CEO TeaJay Aikey.
The Milton-based org may again be “somewhat outgrowing” its name, she said, because businesses from anywhere can now join — though much of its membership comes from Northumberland, Snyder, Montour, Union, and Lycoming Counties. The group is working to publicize that it also supports companies outside of the area that want to reach central Pennsylvanians with their products or services.
That still begs the question: Where exactly is central Pennsylvania?
“It’s not the big cities like Philly and Pittsburgh. It’s kind of in the center there,” Aikey said. “It just makes me kind of think about the personalities, the work ethic, the type of folks that we have.”
The Centre cannot hold?
Why does the imagined central Pennsylvania sprawl so widely?
One reason is that “central,” the word, can be pretty accommodating. Merriam-Webster defines it as “situated, at, in, or near the center” — an inherently relational description.
For residents of Centre County, which is named after a furnace, central Pennsylvania centers on them. In emails to and conversations with PA Local, numerous residents from the county conveyed pride over living smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania.
Boalsburg resident and author Ken Hull, who said his family has lived in the county since the 1790s, told PA Local he thinks a “legitimate way” to define a “broader” central Pennsylvania would be to include Centre’s neighbors. When he hears people from areas farther away claim central Pennsylvania, he gets a little annoyed.
“I don’t, like, go into fisticuffs with people who insist that Harrisburg” is central Pennsylvania, he said. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that I’m very proud of where I live, and where I grew up, and where my ancestors settled.”
According to researchers, Pennsylvania’s geographic center isn’t possible to pinpoint perfectly, but does fall somewhere within Centre County’s 1,113 square miles.
The U.S. Census Bureau calculates a different type of midpoint for each state: the “center of population,” which it defines as “the point at which an imaginary, weightless, rigid, and flat (no elevation effects) surface representation” of a state “would balance if weights of identical size were placed on it so that each weight represented the location of one person.”
In 2020, that point in Pennsylvania was on the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River — about 18 miles north of Harrisburg.
“Central” can also mean “easily accessible from outlying districts” or “of primary importance,” according to the dictionary.
Even before it became the capital in 1812, Harrisburg was a central locale. The city had a lot of early infrastructure and was a transportation hub for European settlers moving west during the colonial period, said Doug Miller, a self-described “native son of Pennsylvania” and lifelong student of state history who runs Pennsbury Manor.
Harrisburg had a ferry point on the mile-wide Susquehanna River, as well as links to other early towns, he said. And Carlisle, about 20 miles west, was a “big hub point” for western expansion.
“Centre County was, of course, connected by roads and so on,” Miller said, “but the population expansion that’s moving west out of the port of destination, Philadelphia, is really going across south-central Pennsylvania and expanding outward, much to the discomfort of certain Native American groups that were in the area.”
How media and the government define central Pa.
If the dictionary can’t clarify what constitutes central Pennsylvania, surely journalists know, right?
Unless you’re willing to embrace an “all of the above” interpretation, not quite. The press, past and present, has used the term to describe just as wide a swath of the state as the readers who answered our survey.
Altoona, Bloomsburg, Gettysburg, Harrisburg, Johnstown, Lebanon, Pottsville, Philipsburg, Ridgway, Shamokin, and Williamsport have all been described as “central Pennsylvania” in newspaper articles and advertisements, per a PA Local review of clippings ranging from 1829 to 2000.
Today, three different TV media markets in Pennsylvania include stations that refer to at least part, if not all, of their coverage area as “central Pennsylvania.”
Exact terminology varies, and can get creative. Johnstown-based FOX 8 directs some of its programming at what it calls “West-Central Pennsylvania,” while the descriptor “south-central” gets used on Lancaster-based WGAL, and ABC27 in Harrisburg often opts for “Midstate.”
Plain-and-simple “central” makes plenty of appearances too, from WTAJ in Altoona, to CBS21 in Harrisburg, to WNEP, a Moosic-based news station that claims to cover both northeastern and central Pennsylvania.
Government sources don’t provide much clarity either. State agencies have a variety of regional definitions that each serve different goals, and not all of them include a dedicated “central” area.
The Game Commission and the Department of Health designate “northcentral” and “southcentral” divisions rather than carving out a “central” district — and the definitions of each vary between the agencies.
The Department of Community and Economic Development splits the state into five regions — including “Central Pennsylvania” — on a business-facing “Pennsylvania Gets It Done” website. The marketing effort is meant to “tell a more relevant and comprehensive story to companies that are looking for a location that meets their specific needs to succeed and thrive,” per a DCED spokesperson.
The DCED’s “Central Pennsylvania” bends the term pretty far: Its map of the region features 17 counties in an upside-down “V,” stretching from Clinton County at the northern tip to five counties along the southern border. The area’s “strength,” the website says, “lies in the diversity of the companies and people that call the region home.”
‘Feels right’
Underneath the collective frustration of determining what exactly counts as central Pennsylvania is a sense that it’s a unique place worth acknowledging.
The region contains a multitude of local cultures, natural features, and built environments that can feel undervalued when lumped together haphazardly.
For that reason, some central Pennsylvanians embrace nondirectional names for the places they call home. These include the Capital Region, the Susquehanna River Valley, the Cumberland Valley, and the Pennsylvania Wilds, among others.
And to some residents, placing another direction — like north, south, east, or west — in front of the “central” makes it feel truer to the essence of their area.
If Ben Cattell Noll of Lancaster is talking to someone from out of state, he might describe his area as “southeastern” or as “an hour and a half from Philly.” But if he’s speaking to a fellow Pennsylvanian, “south-central” is the term that “feels right to Lancaster.”
Most of the 49 Lancaster County residents who answered PA Local’s survey said “south-central” when asked to name their region. Five opted for “southeastern,” five said just “central,” and others used terms like “Amish Country,” “Susquehanna Valley,” and simply “Lancaster.”
Cattell Noll said his perception of his region might be influenced by his media market mostly looking westward from where he lives. His in-laws and spouse grew up in the western part of Chester County — not that far away, and not that dissimilar from Lancaster County — but “their orientation was Philly, and my orientation was to Lancaster, a little towards Harrisburg,” Cattell Noll said.
He wouldn’t describe his area simply as “central PA” though — Harrisburg is “probably where my mind goes” when he hears that term, he said.
Bob Kirchner bounced around Pennsylvania before settling in Elk County, where he’s lived for the past 32 years. He wrote in an email that he’s never quite sure what to call the area since he doesn’t perceive “much of a regional identity,” but noted that it’s probably “more Northcentral PA.” (Five out of the nine Elk Countians who answered PA Local’s survey agreed with that label.)
In an interview with PA Local, though, Kirchner drew “attitudinal” contrasts between his current home and other places he’s lived, including York County.
He described the York area as friendly, albeit too densely populated for his liking. Where he lives now, people have more of a “stoic,” “outdoor attitude,” he said, and “your time is going to be your own.”
“I used to tell the people in south-central Pennsylvania, ‘You’re the nicest people I’ve ever met,’” Kirchner said. “‘There’s just too damn many of you.’”
Steve Mellin, who recently retired to Tioga County and refers to it as “North Central Pennsylvania,” has also noticed a “distinct difference” between the areas north and south of Interstate 80, the east-west highway that roughly bisects the state. A decade-plus of traveling up U.S. Route 15 helped solidify that perception, he told PA Local by email.
“The drive, and scenery, really changes once I get north of Williamsport,” Mellin said.
Is “central Pennsylvania” the sum of all of the hyphenated versions of the term, or its own designation entirely?
To Mellin, the answer is no. “I really can’t imagine anyone that lives in this state saying central PA and meaning a combination of the north central PA and south central PA.”
Norman St. Amour of Mechanicsburg disagrees, and thinks it’s all technically “central Pennsylvania” — but noted that people use the phrase to add extra context to clarify exactly where in the region.
“No matter which description you use, we are discussing very large areas that leave a lot to the imagination,” St. Amour said.
This is the third installment in a series about Pennsylvania’s regions. Find the first piece here, and the second here. To make sure you don’t miss future installments, subscribe to our free, weekly PA Local newsletter.
Did this article make you realize how strong your opinions about Pa. regions are? Draw us a map of how you’d categorize different areas of Pennsylvania, and email it to PA Local reporter Asha Prihar (aprihar@spotlightpa.org). We may publish crowdsourced maps in a future newsletter, article, or video.