Pennsylvania Dutch Country
Encyclopedia : P : PE : PEN : Pennsylvania Dutch Country
Pennsylvania Dutch Country refers to an area of southeastern Pennsylvania that has a high percentage of Amish, Mennonite and "Fancy Dutch" inhabitants and where the Pennsylvania German language was historically common. The term was used in the middle of the 20th century as a description of a region with a distinctive Pennsylvania Dutch culture, but in recent decades the composition of the population is changing and the phrase is used more now in a tourism context than any other.
Geographically the area referred to as Dutch country centers around Allentown, Hershey, Lancaster, Reading and York and the surrounding counties. The term "Dutch" is an archaic term for Germans, and refers to the German-speaking origins of some of the earliest European immigrants to the area in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The German-speaking settlers came from a variety of countries and religious backgrounds, but most became assimilated to American language and culture soon after the turn of the twentieth century. The Amish have retained aspects from their 18th-century way of life, including a German dialect; however, they have changed significantly in the last two hundred years. Nevertheless, for the Amish change has come slower, and gradually they have became more and more distinctively different as the surrounding rural and urban population of Pennsylvania changed.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the region, outside of industrializing cities, was nearly entirely rural, based on an agricultural economy. In the middle of the 20th century, both Amish and non-Amish entrepreneurs began to promote the area as a tourist destination. Though there are still plenty of Amish attempting to follow their traditional way of life, tourism and population growth have significantly changed the appearance and cultural flavor of the area. This area is within 50 miles of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Harrisburg, and has not escaped the effects of being on the western edge of the East Coast urban confluence from Washington to New York City. In the 1990s Lancaster was one of the fastest growing and most prosperous counties of Pennsylvania. Hispanic populations have replaced other earlier ethnic groups in the cities of Lancaster, Reading and Allentown and now these cities and the counties around them have far more Spanish speakers than "Deutsch" speakers.
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