Allegheny County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Allegheny County

Four hundred and forty-six bridges span the rivers, streams, hollows, and railroad tracks of Pittsburgh — more than any other US city and more than the canonical 391 bridges of Venice Italy per Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure 2024 inventory. The bridge density is a direct function of the city's three-river geometry: Pittsburgh is the only US city where three navigable rivers converge at a single named point (the Allegheny River meets the Monongahela River at the Point, forming the Ohio River that flows 981 miles to its confluence with the Mississippi at Cairo IL). The Duquesne Incline and Monongahela Incline (both completed in 1877 to lift 19th-century Slovak and Croatian immigrant steel workers from the Mon Valley flats to the hilltop neighborhoods of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights) remain the oldest continuously-operating funicular passenger railways in the United States per the American Public Transportation Association historical roster, with both still serving as daily commuter transportation.

Allegheny County's 730 sq mi wrap Pittsburgh (population 302,971, the county seat and the second-most-populous Pennsylvania city after Philadelphia), 130 incorporated municipalities (the most of any US county per Census of Governments — a function of late-19th-century mining-town incorporations that never consolidated), and the southern approach to the Allegheny National Forest via PA-28. Raccoon Creek State Park 25 miles west of downtown accepts rigs to 50 ft with electric hookups on 172 sites; the park's Frankfort Mineral Springs and the 7,572-acre wildflower reserve make it the largest Pennsylvania state park west of the Susquehanna River. Moraine State Park 35 miles north (rigs to 30 ft, no hookups, 11 sites in the Lakeside Loop only) is the alternative state-park RV-friendly base. City of Pittsburgh Code §549.06 prohibits overnight RV street parking citywide; the South Side Walmart has historically permitted overnight stays at manager's discretion. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) is the primary commercial gateway for southwestern Pennsylvania. The Frick Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh (a 535-ft late-Gothic skyscraper that is the second-tallest university building in the world) anchor the cultural circuit.