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is a borough in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 18 miles (29 km) west by southwest of Harrisburg, the State capital. The name is traditionally pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2000 census, the borough population was 17,970. It is the county seat of Cumberland County.
Carlisle is the smaller principal city of the Harrisburg–Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Cumberland, Dauphin, and Perry counties.
Carlisle was laid out and settled by Scots-Irish immigrants in 1751 and became the center of their settlement in the Cumberland Valley. It was named after its sister town in Carlisle, England, and even built its former jailhouse (still standing and in use by Cumberland County as general government offices now) to resemble Carlisle Citadel. Carlisle was initially part of Lancaster County. Carlisle was incorporated as a borough on April 13, 1782. As authorized by a general borough law of 1851 (amended in 1852), the government is administered by a burgess and a borough council.
In 1787 Carlisle was the scene of a riot instigated by Anti-Federalists in response to a planned march in favor of the US constitution. In 1794 during the Whiskey Rebellion, the troops of Pennsylvania and New Jersey assembled in Carlisle under the leadership of George Washington. On a related note, George Washington worshipped during that time in the First Presbyterian Church at the corner of Hanover and High streets. The borough was shelled by the Confederates on July 1, 1863, during the Battle of Carlisle, part of the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War. On a column in front of the city's historic courthouse, evidence of the cannonballs' destruction can still be seen. Carlisle was well-known at one time for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which trained Native Americans from all over the United States; one of its notable graduates was athletic hero Jim Thorpe. However, some view the Carlisle School as the first of many schools that were used for "cultural genocide" of American Indians. Shortly after the Wounded Knee Massacre, Native Americans were forcefully taken from their families on the newly instituted reservations, sent to Carlisle, and were forced to give up their dress, languages, customs, religious views, sciences, and all other parts of their culture (often physical force and abuse was used to institute this policy). After this, the American Indian students were sent back from Carlisle to their reservations to teach their families how to be what the United States government identified as civilized.
Carlisle is also home to Dickinson College, established in 1773 and later chartered in 1783, making it the first college founded in the newly recognized United States. The Dickinson School of Law, founded in 1834 and affiliated with Dickinson College until 1914, is the fifth oldest law school in the United States and the oldest law school in Pennsylvania. It remained independent for over 80 years, until it merged with The Pennsylvania State University in 1997, becoming the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.
The U.S. Army War College, located at the Carlisle Barracks, caters to high-level military personnel and civilians and prepares them for strategic leadership responsibilities. The Carlisle Barracks is the oldest installation in the United States Army and Army's most senior military educational institution. Carlisle is home of the U.S. Army Military Heritage Museum.