Erie Audioguides

Erie sits on the southern shore of Lake Erie in the far northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, the state's only port on the Great Lakes and its third-largest city. The lake has shaped everything about the place: the climate, the economy, the history. On September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry led a small American fleet to a decisive victory over the British naval squadron on Lake Erie in the Battle of Lake Erie, a turning point in the War of 1812. His flagship, a reconstruction called the Brig Niagara, is kept at the Erie Maritime Museum and is one of the few full-rigged sailing warships regularly taken out onto open water.

Presque Isle State Park, a curved sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie just west of the city, offers Pennsylvania's only beaches suitable for Great Lakes swimming and some of the best bird-watching in the eastern United States, particularly during spring and fall migrations.

The peninsula changes shape slowly as wind and wave move its sand, and the Presque Isle Lighthouse at its tip has been guiding ships since 1872. The Erie Art Museum downtown holds a modest but worthwhile collection and the Medger Evers Block on East 12th Street, with its collection of small music clubs and restaurants, gives the city a more spirited evening scene than its economic circumstances might suggest.