Pennsylvania
including Pittsburg, Philadelphia
From the 50 State Visitors Guide :
42 Pa.C.S.2023 §§9799.10 through 9799.9
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
Within 3 business
days of establishing residence, becoming employed, or attending school. 3 business days for updates. If
fails to establish residence but nevertheless resides in state, shall register
as transient. §9799.19.
Visitors: “Residence” means place where domiciled for 30 days or
more w/in a calendar year. “Transient”
means no residence
but nevertheless resides in state in a temporary place or dwelling, including a
homeless shelter or park. §9799.12.
Per the Lancaster State Police office, PA has no specific time limit for
visiting registrants but staying more than 30 days per calendar year or
becoming employed or attending school establishes residency and would trigger a
requirement to register. Updated June 2021.
List of registration
sites: www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us/VerificationSites
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
PA
has no statewide residency restrictions, and local govts are pre-empted from
local restrictive requirements, not by state law but by 2 court cases:
Fross v.
County of Allegheny, 20 A.3d 1193
- held that Allegheny County residence restrictions are preempted by State law
under the doctrine of “conflict preemption.”
Lake Naomi
Club, Inc. v. Rosado, 285 A.3d 1
(Pa. Cmmw. Ct. 2022) – held that a private, planned community cannot adopt a
restrictive covenant that prohibits PFRs from residing within that community.
Updated Mar 2025.
Registry website supposedly only shows: Sexually violent offenders, Sexually violent
predators, Sexually violent delinquent children.
Duration & updates:
15 years to life. Updates: T1 – annual, T2 – 6 mo., T3 &
SVP – quarterly, Transient – monthly
A Pennsylvania Update: April 2025
In theory, Pennsylvania should
be a pretty easy state to get along with as a registered visitor. Their SOR statute states that “Residence”
means a place where a registrant is domiciled for 30 days or more within a
calendar year. Also, there are no statewide
or local residency or presence requirements.
Thank you to PARSOL for providing me with the citations for 2 court cases that ensure this
- Fross v. County of Allegheny, 20 A.3d 1193 and Lake Naomi Club, Inc. v.
Rosado, 285 A.3d 1 (Pa. Cmmw. Ct. 2022).
They also have pointed out that the state SOR office is back to
answering the phone these days which is also a help. These updates are significant enough – and
Pennsylvania is a significant enough state – that I am updating and re-posting
the 50 State Visitors Guide chart on this site to include them.
Unfortunately “Transient” means
the registrant has no residence
but nevertheless “resides in the state,” but while the word “residence” is
defined, the word “resides” is not, so … if you’re traveling through
Pennsylvania, how long do you have to be there before you “reside” without
having a “residence” …? To the average
traveler this may seem like a ridiculous question, but as registered citizens
you and I know it’s far from academic. You
can’t count on the state police officer who pulls you over for having a blown
tail light to give you the interpretation you wanted.
I resolved to resolve
this uncertainty on a trip I made to the Northeast May 2021. After staying
overnight at a PA state park campground I visited the Lancaster State Police
office (which is also a Registration Verification Site) and was referred there
to speak to an officer who admitted he was “not the sex offender expert” (then
why was he assigned to answer this question? Was the “expert” out of the
office?).
After going back to
his office and reading the statute he nevertheless opined that PA has no specific time limit for visiting registrants but
staying more than 30 days per calendar year or becoming employed or attending
school establishes residency and would trigger a requirement to register. That
confirmed the same conclusion I reached after reading the statute.
Most recent visit: Pittsburg, May 2025
See the sights, skip the downtown
Downtown Pittsburg as seen from the
Duquesne Incline. It looks good from a distance.
As part of my 2025 Northeast
road trip I passed through Pennsylvania both coming and going from Iowa. I had, as noted above, no fear of overstaying
my visitor’s grace period or of violating any state or local restriction
because there are none.
It so happened I first entered from
West Virginia on the morning of the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. My goal for that day was to visit my first
Big City – Pittsburg. Should be pretty
busy on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, right? Answer – Nope! Not unless you count all that traffic trying
to get out of town on their way to someplace other than Pittsburg for a holiday
weekend!
My plan was to see the sights
during the day, then go downtown to see their famous riverfront and have dinner
before retiring to my waiting motel room.
My first stop, however, was the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum near
Washington, PA which was on my way to Pittsburg. If you love train museums like I do you’ll
love this one.
In Pittsburg, I rode the
Duquesne Incline, visited the Andy Warhol Museum (Wow!) and it wasn’t until
after 4 pm that I got to the Carnegie Museums, of which there are several, and
which at least on that holiday Friday were closing at 5 pm so all I had time
for was art – which was great art but now I know you have to set aside at least
half a day for these museums. Next time
I’m in the region I’ll do that.
Andy Warhol Museum. Notice how his training as a commercial artist (left) influenced his later work.
I didn’t go see any sports
facilities or events because I’m not interested and you couldn’t get tickets
for Barry Manalow that night anyway.
Instead I went downtown to experience what I had always heard was a very
successful riverfront and downtown renewal.
Wow what a disappointment! Point State Park (at the confluence of
Pittsburg’s “Three Rivers”) was still undergoing renovations and was lifeless
on that unseasonably cold and grey afternoon.
The keynote downtown redevelopment project, Gateway Center, is a
high-rise office complex that becomes a dark and scary place as soon as all the
employees escape to the burbs at 5:00 pm, and that effect was accentuated by
everyone having fled to the mountains that weekend.
Downtown Pittsburg
As for Pittsburg’s anemic
little downtown strip, few people were there to party that evening but I did
find a good little Mediterranean restaurant for dinner.
Throwing in a PA side trip
While on my way from Iowa to the June 2026 NARSOL Conference in Baltimore, I happened to pass near Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania. It's the battle that George Washington lost and just barely got out alive from during the French and Indian War. It was interesting. Here's a photo:
Musket demo at Fort Necessity.
Most recent visit: Allegheny Mountains, May-June
2025
Saturday of Memorial Day
weekend my goal was no more ambitious than to explore the Allegheny Mountains
of western PA on my way to a waiting bungled reservation at a Motel 6 near
Wilkes-Barre. There are two big federal
and state forests – Allegheny National Forest and a cluster of connected state
forests – and it’s all quite beautiful.
The only problem is there aren’t many significant destinations, either
natural or man-made, so I spent most of that day pleasure driving and looking
at small towns. The next morning I was
on to New Jersey.
On the return leg of my
Northeastern US road trip I entered Pennsylvania from New York State. Again my goal was only to explore a different
part of the Alleghenies on my way to a campground near Sharon, PA. The next morning I was on my way to
Cleveland.
Small Town Notes:
New Bethlehem – Good. Local industry – Smuckers.
Ridgway – The whole downtown is
a National Register District. It’s not
fair to the other towns.
Johnsonburg – Good. Local industry – paper mill.
St. Mary’s – good.
Renovo – An old company town
composed mainly of row houses. The
crumbling downtown runs alongside the old railroad.
Bradford – Nice downtown but
otherwise just okay.
Kane – Good. Had lunch at a “garbage cuisine” storefront.
Greenville – No judgement. Has a lot of brick streets. Growth over time has created small town
sprawl without benefiting the town itself.
Previous visits: Philadelphia, 2023-24
In December 2023 I
traveled from Florida with my now ex-wife but still Best Friend Forever to
visit relatives and participate in a Wreaths Across America event on Long
Island. We had decided ahead of time to
reserve a hotel room one night in Philadelphia so we could take in a few sights
the next morning before continuing on to New Jersey.
Independence Hall, Philadelphia
As with our previous
stops in Virginia, my ex-wife had never been
to Philadelphia’s historic sites before and she was very impressed with
Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
I was too even though I’d seen them before. At lunchtime we asked one of the sales ladies
at the Liberty Bell gift shop where to get a good Philly Cheesesteak and she
suggested the Reading Terminal Marketplace.
Wow! It’s like other downtown
markets such as Faneuil Hall or Charleston Market, but even bigger with all
kinds of stuff – including several Philly Cheesesteak options. I also bought baked goods at one of the
semi-authentic looking Amish stalls.
We spent a couple of hours just
at the Reading Market but after that it was time to get moving – we had a hotel
reservation that night in far northern New Jersey.
You MUST have a Philly cheese steak sub!
In April 2024 my bff & I
were again traveling from New Jersey and decided to stop in Philadelphia again
to see a few sites we had missed on the previous trip, specifically Betsey
Ross’s house and Benjamin Franklin’s Museum.
Then we visited Valley Forge on our way to the same hotel in “downtown”
Intercourse where she had stayed two years before (see below). Although she enjoyed all the stops we made,
she was disappointed that left no time for touring Pennsylvania Dutch country,
neither that afternoon nor the next morning on the way out of state.
Previous visits: 2022-23
In July 2022 I traveled thru
Pennsylvania while tagging along with my family on their trip to the
Northeast. My ex-wife likes Pennsylvania
Dutch Country very much. I find it to be
hopelessly commercialized. What must it
be like to be an actual Amish or Mennonite person trying to go about your life
surrounded by billboards and tacky trinket shops and fake buggy rides? You have
my sympathy, folks.
So-called "historic train ride" in Strasburg, PA
Nevertheless she had reserved a
hotel room right in “downtown” Intercourse.
I stayed at the very same state park I had the year before, about 40
miles away. We spent way too much time
at that tacky tourist village in Intercourse, but the upside to that place is
that trapping all the tourists there keeps us away from the locals.
Later that day we were all
rushing eastbound on I-78. They spent
the night at a hotel in Stroudsburg while I had reserved a campground in nearby
Hickory Run State Park. We were
splitting up after that – they were on their way to Long Island to spend four
days with my ex-inlaws, while I was headed for Maine to go whale watching.
On the southbound leg of our Northeast trip we came back thru Pennsylvania, this time to visit Hershey’s Chocolate World and Hersheypark. I was roped into this part of the trip because our granddaughter wanted more than anything to ride on some of the scariest rollercoasters in that theme park, and although Mom insisted that she be accompanied by an adult neither she nor Grandma were willing to do the accompanying.
American Antique Car Assn. Museum, Hershey PA
Wow, some of those
rides were truly terrifying! I told my granddaughter
that going on them was something I would consider to be an item on my bucket
list, but don’t expect me to do that again!
In May 2023 I again
passed through Pennsylvania on my way from West Virginia to New Jersey. This time I could skip Pennsylvania Dutch
Country, and would have skipped Hershey too until I saw a sign for the American
Antique Car Association Museum. Wow –
way cool!
From there it was on
to Hickory Run State Park to stay the night before proceeding to New Jersey. It also so happened that on the return leg of
my journey, which took me through Upstate New York, I made a little side trip
into Upstate PA to see the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. Yes there is such a thing and it’s really
spectacular!
The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, in Leonard Harrison St. Pk.
Bruce Hossfield, Atwo Zee Registered Traveler
