ERIE, a city of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in the north-western corner of the State, on Lake Erie; a port of entry, the county-seat of Erie county, and an important manufacturing and commercial city. It is on Federal highways 6, 19 and 20 ; has an airport ; and is served by the Bessemer and Lake Erie, the New York Central, the Nickel Plate, and the Pennsylvania railways, by motor-bus lines and an interurban electric railway and by lake steamers. The population in 1920, including the area annexed just after the Fed eral census was taken, was 102,093, of whom about 22% were foreign-born white (largely from Germany, Poland, Italy and Russia) ; and was 115,967 in 1930 by the Federal census.
Erie has a fine harbour, protected from the severest storms by the peninsula of Presque Isle, a natural breakwall 11m. long and from 3oof t. to 2.5m. across, and equipped with modern facilities for loading and unloading. The largest carriers on the Great Lakes can enter and leave the harbour without a tow. The city covers about 20 sq.m. of level ground, about 5 7of t. above sea-level. Most of the streets are 6o or 1 oof t. wide, and they cross at right angles. There are 18 municipal parks, with an aggregate area of 218ac.; and Presque Isle, with its 3 20oac. of virgin forest, fine bathing beaches and excellent fishing, is a State park. East and west of the city for the lake shore is lined with summer homes and cottages. There is a municipal bathing pool, two municipal and two private golf courses, a community playhouse, a local sym phony orchestra and a stadium which seats 15,000. Natural gas is used for domestic fuel. The city has a planning commission. In 1927 the assessed valuation of property was $142,468,828.
The manufacturing industries are large, numerous and diver sified, with an output for 248 factories in 1927 valued at $91,030, 790. The Erie works of the General Electric Company, occupy ing 3ooac. and employing normally 6,500 persons, makes electric locomotives, railway motors, generators, transformers, air com pressors and various kinds of equipment, castings and patterns. Other leading factory products are boilers, engines, tanks, wringers, precision tools, castings of all kinds, blast furnaces, stoves, asbestos products, silks, paper, aluminium utensils, hospital and sterilizing equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, steam shovels and travelling cranes. The commerce of the port amounted in 1927 to 2,860,772 tons (valued at $40,576,839), consisting largely of incoming pulpwood from Canada, grain, flour, and iron ore from north-western ports, and shipments of coal (bitu minous and anthracite) received by rail from the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia fields. The city ships by rail large quan tities of grapes and other fruits, fish and manufactured products. Bank clearings in 1926 amounted to $429,618,517.
A United States Naval Reserve unit, stations of the Coast Guard Service and of the Weather bureau, a State armory, and a State fish hatchery are located at Erie. It is the headquarters of the State harbour and fish commission, and the seat of the State soldiers' and sailors' home, which occupies a beautiful site on a bluff overlooking both the lake and the city. Near by there is a monument erected to General Anthony Wayne, who died here on Dec. 15, 1796.
In 1753 the French built a stockade and blockhouse, called Ft. Presque Isle, on the site of Erie, and around it grew up a village. The village was abandoned, probably because of an epi demic of small-pox, in 1758, and the fort in 1759. It was occupied by the British in 1760; captured by the Indians on June 22, 1763, during the Conspiracy of Pontiac ; regained by the British, under Col. Lionel Bradstreet, in 1764; and passed into the possession of the United States in 1785. The town was laid out in 1795, by General Andrew Ellicott, first surveyor-general of the United States, who had laid out Washington after the plan of L'Enfant. It became the county seat when Erie county was erected in 1803; was incorporated as a borough in and as a city in 1851. Here, in six months, were built most of the vessels with which Com modore Oliver H. Perry won his naval victory over the British off Put-in-Bay on Sept. io, 1813. In 1913 Perry's flagship, the "Niagara," was raised from the bottom of Misery Bay, on the shore of Presque Isle, where his fleet was sunk following the declaration of peace. It was rebuilt and re-equipped and an chored at the Public Dock, where it is maintained as a historic exhibit. The first iron battleship on the Great Lakes, the "Wol verine," now used as a naval training ship, was built at Erie in 1843, out of plates and equipment hauled by oxen from Pitts burgh, and this is still its home port. A replica of the blockhouse built by General Wayne, which protected the harbour in the early days and while Perry's fleet was under construction, has been erected on the original site. In 1850 the population of Erie was 5,858; in 5870, 19,646; in 1890, 40,634; in 1910, 66,525; and between 1910 and 1920 it increased 40•4%. Since 1910 the area of the city has increased nearly threefold.