Village (Pennsylvania)

A village in Pennsylvania is a geographic area within a larger political subdivision, usually a township, although some villages are located within a borough. Many of the villages in Pennsylvania are census-designated place centered around a post office, but this is not always the case.

Signage for the village of Indian Orchard in Wayne County

The use of the term "village" in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a historical holdover that is unusual among U.S. states as the term village is used in other states to describe smaller self-governing municipal divisions that Pennsylvania calls "boroughs."

Geographic area

Villages in Pennsylvania are very often loosely defined by local residents with no definitive borders, other than possibly a speed zone along the highways serving them. They often represent the area of original settlement in an area.

Government

As villages in Pennsylvania are not political subdivision in and of themselves, they have no local governmental authority. Instead, they are part of, and under the authority of, their respective municipality. In townships, a village typically serves as the seat of the township government (for example, the town offices for Foster Township, McKean County, Pennsylvania are located in the village of Foster Brook).

gollark: I didn't mention "money".
gollark: What?
gollark: (Sidenote: interestingly, apparently the development of farming actually led to significantly *worse* life for people for quite a long time, because it allowed much more population per land area, causing people to end up at a subsistence level and quite malnourished and stuff)
gollark: Modern supply chains are complex, and while we could not have those you would then lose out on stuff like microelectronics, medical things, and the economies of scale meaning you can have nice things cheaply.
gollark: How is that better? We need widescale coordination to do anything.

See also

References
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