Orson, Pennsylvania

Orson, Pennsylvania
Village
Village of Orson
Orson as seen from Crosstown Highway, facing east.
Nickname(s): Hine's Corners(historical), Orson Corners(rarely used)
Orson, Pennsylvania Orson's Location within Pennsylvania.
Coordinates: 41°48′49.302″N 75°26′52.6518″W / 41.81369500°N 75.447958833°W / 41.81369500; -75.447958833Coordinates: 41°48′49.302″N 75°26′52.6518″W / 41.81369500°N 75.447958833°W / 41.81369500; -75.447958833
Country	United States
Commonwealth	Pennsylvania
U.S. Congressional District	PA-10
School District	Wayne Highlands Region I
County	Wayne
Magisterial District	22-3-04
Township	Preston
Settled	1831 or 1840
Founded by	Merritt Hine
Named for	Orson C. Chamberlain
Elevation	1,998 ft (609 m)
Time zone	Eastern (EST) (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	Eastern Daylight (EDT) (UTC-4)
ZIP codes	De jure 18449 De facto 18439 (Lakewood) 18465 (Thompson) 18470 (Union Dale)
Area code(s)	570
GNIS feature ID	1183050
FIPS code	42-127-62600-57144
Major Roads
Waterways	Independent Lake,Lackawanna River (East Branch), Lackawaxen River (West Branch), Mud Pond, Orson Pond

Orson is a village in Preston Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania, in the Lake Region of the Poconos. It was once an important depot of the Scranton Division of the New York, Ontario & Western (O&W) Railway, but today, when it is known outside of its immediate vicinity, it is largely for being the site of the intersection of two state roads, Belmont Turnpike (partially concurrent with Pennsylvania Route 670, or PA-670) and Crosstown Highway (entirely concurrent with PA-370), or as the location of Independent Lake Camp (ILC), since ILC's reputation and commercial reach, like those of most rural American summer camps, extend beyond the community in which the camp is physically located.

Two Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) signs on Crosstown Highway identify the community as the "Village of Orson." In Pennsylvania, a village is an unincorporated community within a township, but PennDOT identifies most villages with roadside signs, a fact that might reasonably lead those unfamiliar with this practice to believe that these communities are incorporated municipalities administered separately from the townships in which they are located. Since Pennsylvania's villages, including Orson, are, in fact, not municipalities in their own right, they do not have official boundaries, and the United States Census Bureau does not collect statistics for them (unless, unlike Orson, they are census-designated places). In spite of this, because of strong local consensus, as well as the fact that many features are named for the villages they are associated with, it is almost always possible to consistently determine whether a particular feature is in one village or another.