YORK, a city of south-eastern Pennsylvania, U.S.A., the county seat of York county; on Federal highways 3o (the Lin coln) and III, 90 m. W. of Philadelphia and 28 m. S. by E. of Harrisburg. It is served by the Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania and the Western Maryland railways. Pop. (192o) 47,512 (94% native white) ; 1930 Federal census (excluding con tiguous boroughs) 55,254. The city's area of 3.5 sq.m. is built up closely and there are populous industrial districts just outside the corporate limits in several directions. The streets in the central part of the city (laid out in 1741 in a bend of Codorus creek, by a surveyor for the Penns) bear such names as King, Queen, Duke, Princess and George, and the city itself was named after the English York. Penn common was set aside for the public in the original plan. The Quaker meeting house was erected in 1765, and there are several old burying grounds. The building used by Gen. Wayne for his headquarters while recruiting his brigade for the march on Yorktown still stands, in the heart of the city, and in Farquhar park there is a copy of the Provincial court house in which the Continental Congress held its sessions. The city's assessed valuation for 1927 was $52,109,350. Since 1912 it has had a commission form of government. York is the commercial centre of a rich agricultural region, and it has many large and diversified manufacturing industries. In 1927 the product of 218 factories in the city was valued at Bank debits in 1927 aggregated $282,610,000.
York was the first permanent settlement in Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna. It was laid out in 1741 in the centre of Springettsbury manor, a tract of 64,00o ac. granted to Springett
Penn (a grandson of William Penn) in 1722. The first settlers were chiefly Germans from the Rhenish Palatinate (Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites and Moravians), with some English Quakers and Scotch-Irish. The village was on the Monocacy road, the main route to the South and the South-west, and grew rapidly. When York county was erected in 1749 it was made the county seat, and by 1754 it had 210 houses and a thousand inhabitants. In 1777, when the British approached Philadelphia, the Continen tal Congress left the city, and after holding one day's session in Lancaster, crossed the Susquehanna to York and made it the national capital from Sept. 3o, 1777, to June 27, 1778. In the old county court-house (built and torn down in 1849) the Congress passed the Articles of Confederation, received the news of Burgoyne's surrender, issued the first national Thanks giving proclamation, received word from Franklin in Paris that France would aid with money, ships and men, received Von Steuben and Lafayette and commissioned them as major-generals.
It was in York that the Conway Cabal was frustrated by Lafay ette. Here $1,50o,000 in silver, lent by France, was brought in Sept. 1778, and here Benjamin Franklin's printing press, moved from Philadelphia, issued $10,000,000 of Continental money. During the Civil War Confederate troops entered the town on June 28, 1863, and a small Federal force retreated before them. York was incorporated as a borough in 1787 and as a city in 1887.