Its motto: Virtue, Liberty and Independence.

Its nicknames: Keystone State, Quaker State.

Gentle vistas in the cradle of independence

Farmers have tilled the fertile soil of southeast Pennsylvania since the 1600's. As soon as William Penn proclaimed "the foundation of a free colony for all mankind," his Quaker brethren arrived from England and Wales to clear the land for crops. An official policy of religious tolerance then drew Germans. So industrious were these "Pennsylvania Deutsch" that southeastern Pennsylvania became one of the colonial America's most important breadbaskets.

Philadelphia was and is the metropolis of eastern Pennsylvania. Overlooked today by a statue of William Penn high atop City Hall, the city was laid out in 1682. The orderly green town became the birthplace of America's independence.

Pennsylvania's Appalachians are not as lofty as most stretches of the range. Still, for centuries they proved to be a formidable barrier. Settlers who crossed them named the range the Endless Mountains.

If crossing Pennsylvania by land was difficult, it was impossible by water: no east-west river system crosses the state. Nonetheless, rivers have been of critical importance to Pennsylvania. The Delaware gave Philadelphia access to the sea; the Lehigh carried coal and iron ore from the Appalachians to the foundries of Bethlehem; the Susquehanna linked Pennsylvania farmlands with Chesapeake Bay. But perhaps the most important water route is at Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers come together to form the Ohio River the great migration and trade route to the West. Pittsburgh was the "Gateway to the West'. When its role in migration of pioneers was finished, the city gained renown and wealth as the foremost manufacturer of steel Until the 1970's, factories lined the banks of its three rivers for miles on end

Some 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh is situated one of the finest man-made works in Pennsylvania - the celebrated house called Fallingwater, which Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the Pittsburgh businessman Edgar J. Kaufman in 1936.

Built of local sandstone and concrete, it perches on a craggy waterfall in a forest setting. The house is a mingling of elements that express the character of Pennsylvania: an energetic combination of natural and manmade, rugged and refined.

Pennsylvania was the second state to ratify Constitution in 1787.

(”The USA Diversity of 50 States”)