Episode 1 of 2
Founding and survey of Harrisburg
- When
- 1785
- Where
- Town of Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River
John Harris, Jr. planned a town named Harrisburg on his father's land in 1785, and William Maclay formally surveyed it that spring.
In 1785, John Harris, Jr. made plans to lay out a town on his father's land, which he named Harrisburg. In the spring of 1785, the town was formally surveyed by William Maclay, a son-in-law of John Harris, Sr. The site lay on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, where a trading post had been established in 1719 at a location important to westward expansion past the Blue Mountain range.
Sources
- Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-20
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.