Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania history

In the nineteenth century, Pennsylvania was a center for a variety of reforms. For example, the construction of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia (1829) introduced a new system of criminal justice that became a model throughout the world.

The discovery of oil in that Pennsylvania town in 1859, and the commercial exploitation of oil, and later natural gas, triggered a boom that created tremendous wealth—and spectacular failures.

As Pennsylvania approached the pinnacle of its prestige and power as a state, President Theodore Roosevelt came to Harrisburg in 1906 to dedicate the State Capitol, a monument to America’s Gilded Age.

In 1919 Pennsylvania’s major industries employed more than 1.6 million workers.

The population of Pennsylvania has been nearly stable since reaching 10.5 million in 1950, having increased by only a few million in subsequent decades.

In Harrisburg, state agencies that regulate and protect the environment and manage the state’s parks and forests work in a building named for Rachel Carson, a Pennsylvanian whose writings, especially The Silent Spring (1962), directly led to the modern environmental movement.

George W. Bush won the presidential election of 2000 because the fifty states cast more electoral votes for him, even though more people actually voted for his opponent, Albert A. Gore Jr.