The Central Courthouse Square in the American County Seat

American county seats are most often towns that developed at the site selected for the courthouse in the formative days of the county. The courthouse and the public square around it often dramatize the civic origin through their nuclear position in the town's business center. The earliest of these central courthouse squares identified were in southeastern Pennsylvania, beginning in 1739, but they are now most common in the postcolonial counties of the South and in the lower Midwest. The distribution of the central courthouse square and its two major variants is most readily understood in terms of the mainstream of the westward movement.