US Map / Cities / Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Map

Pittsburgh is built at the forks of three rivers, on hills so cut up by their valleys that the city needs more bridges than any other in the country.

Where is Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh is in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 30 miles east of the Ohio line and roughly 300 miles west of Philadelphia — the two ends of a state whose middle is mountains. Cleveland is about 135 miles northwest, Columbus some 185 miles west, and Baltimore roughly 245 miles southeast. Harrisburg, the state capital, is about 200 miles east. Pittsburgh's natural connections run west and south down the rivers rather than east across the ridges, which is why it has always felt more Midwestern than the rest of Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh at a glance

Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the seat of Allegheny County and the second largest city in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia. The two stand at opposite corners of the state with 67 counties between them on the Pennsylvania county map, and no third Pennsylvania city is anywhere near their size. Allegheny County contains 130 separate municipalities, an unusually fragmented arrangement that keeps the city's own population figure well below the size of the built-up area around it. The Pennsylvania state page covers the split between the state's eastern and western halves.

Three rivers and the Allegheny Plateau

The Allegheny comes down from the north and the Monongahela up from the south, and where they meet at the Point they form the Ohio River, which flows northwest then southwest for nearly 1,000 miles to the Mississippi. Control of that junction was worth a war: the French built Fort Duquesne here in 1754 and the British took it and renamed it Fort Pitt four years later. The city sits on the dissected Allegheny Plateau at the western edge of the Appalachians — not folded ridges but a high surface cut into steep hills by the rivers, with the downtown triangle at about 730 feet and hilltop neighborhoods 400 feet above it. The Pittsburgh coal seam runs under the region and outcrops in those valley walls, which put fuel, iron ore shipped in from Lake Superior, and river transport in the same place and made the steel industry.

Cities near Pittsburgh

Cleveland and Buffalo lie north, Columbus and Cincinnati west and southwest, and Philadelphia and Baltimore east. The Census Bureau files Pennsylvania with New York and New Jersey in the Mid-Atlantic division, a grouping that suits Philadelphia far better than it suits Pittsburgh.