Portal:Lancaster, Pennsylvania/Intro

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lancaster, the Red Rose City, is a city in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is the county seat of Lancaster County. With a population of 55,351, it is ranked as the 515th-largest city in the United States. (Lancaster County, with its suburbs, boroughs, and townships, is the 99th largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States, with an estimated population (in 2005) of 490,562.)

Locals quickly recognize visitors to Lancaster by the way they pronounce Lancaster. Natives typically pronounce it as LANK-i-stir, rather than LAN-CAS-ter (with the first two syllables more or less equally stressed), as is the common pronunciation for other Lancasters in the US.

Lancaster is named after the English city of Lancaster by native John Wright. Its symbol, the red rose, is from the House of Lancaster. The Lancaster County Prison was built in the 1850s to resemble Lancaster Castle in Lancashire.