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23 February 2014

I Think I Know Where We Live...Maybe

I know, I know, we have lived in Pennsylvania for about nine months (has it really been nine months already?  Wow, time is flying some how) and we are just now figuring out where we live.  In states with city planners (aka the west coast) the layers within a state are easy to identify: state, county, city.  In Pennsylvania there are lots of layers (if they can even be called that, more like splotches): state, county, township, borough, city, town, village.  And these aren't easy to figure out.  Our realtor couldn't even explain it to us.  I had to look up what municipality we lived in for a tax form and I had no idea what to put down.  I came across a Wikipedia page that explains it the best.  Here is where we live:

State: Pennsylvania

County: York
(those two are the only easy ones to answer)

Township: Newberry Township
(this is easy to answer, too, once you know about this level. FYI township abbreviation is Twp.  We couldn't figure out what Twp. stood for forever)

Borough: none

City: none
(Twps, Boroughs and Cities are all on the same level and you can only live in one of them.  Twps are more "country side" while Boroughs are main local areas and Cities are the large "metropolitan" areas, kinda.  Definitions very from each location, kinda)

Town: depends.  Weird I know, but it really does depend.  Our correct and technical town is Goldsboro (not to be confused with Goldsboro Borough).  The USPS renames us as Etters.  Why and how did this happen?  I don't know.  If you mail something, our town is Etters, but when Googling us Google will change Etters to Goldsboro.  We are both, but yet not...

Village: Valley Green.  We get this name because there is a golf course near us called Valley Green so they named a lot of clusters of homes, including our townhouse complex Valley Green.  So they decided to make us a village.  I never knew we lived in a village until today.

Here is a map of our county.  You can see our village in blue as a "Census Designated Place" near the top of our county in the Newberry Twp.
(Map swiped from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_County,_Pennsylvania#Municipalities)

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