U.S. Cities by Letter - P

The capital and most populous city of Arizona was named to describe a city rising from the ashes of an older civilization.

The “City of Brotherly Love” is the most populous in Pennsylvania. It is the home of the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Temple University, and five professional sports teams.

This Oregon city was named after what is now the most populous city in Maine.

This city of 446 bridges lies at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, is known as the Steel City, and is the second most populous in Pennsylvania.

Texas’s ninth most populous city was named after a Spanish word for “flat,” describing the surrounding terrain.

The name of Florida’s seventh largest city contains a saint’s name. Its location was largely uninhabited as late as the early 1960s.

The sixth largest city in Arizona was named for an Illinois city that is now smaller than this one. It is the home of the San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners during spring training.

The capital and most populous city of Rhode Island was once noted for its textile manufacturing, machine tool, jewelry, and silverware industries. It was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 and grew into one of the original thirteen colonies.

This Florida city sits on what used to be mostly swampland. Its two-word name contains a county in Wales and a type of tree, both of which begin with the same letter.

This California city lies across the San Gabriel Mountains from the Los Angeles Basin, in Antelope Valley (which actually had indigenous antelope until the 1890s). Its name has two syllables, each of which is an English word, as follows.

Once known as a mill town, this New Jersey city on the Passaic River has the nation’s second largest per capita Muslim population.

The lush vegetation around the site of this Texas city inspired its founders to name it after a California city that now hosts the Tournament of Roses Parade and that is now smaller than this one.

Known as the “Queen of the Citrus Belt“ in the 1920s, this California city was named after the ancient Roman goddess of fruit.

The host of the Rose Bowl, the 44th largest city in California, is where the little old lady is from in Jan and Dean’s 1964 hit single.

In the 1700s, the area around this present-day Florida city was known successively as Turkey Creek, Elbow Creek, and Crane Creek. Its name today consists of two words, as follows.

Polish nobleman Witold von Zychlinski named this Texas community after being inspired by the many pear trees in the area.

Utah’s fourth largest city is the home of Brigham Young University. Originally founded as Fort Utah, the city was renamed in 1850 in honor of early resident and trapper Étienne Provost.

The 20th largest city in Florida was allegedly named when Frank Sheen, an early resident, jotted down the name of the fish he had for dinner on a survey of the area. The name of the fish, followed by a word that means “a strip of land covered with sand, pebbles, or small stones at the edge of a body of water” comprise the city’s name.

The name of Colorado’s ninth most populous city is a Native American “settlement of the southwestern US, especially one consisting of multistoried adobe houses.”

Established in 1691, and first called Fort Clark, this city is the oldest permanent European settlement in Illinois. It was the center of the U.S. whisky industry … until Prohibition.