Punxsutawney (; Lenape: Punkwsutènay)
is a borough in southern Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, United States. Punxsutawney is known globally for its annual Groundhog Day celebration held each February 2, during which thousands of attendees and international media outlets visit the town for an annual weather prediction by the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, though the actual prediction location, Gobbler’s Knob, is actually in next-door Young Township.

The borough, located 84 miles (135 km) northeast of Pittsburgh and 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Altoona, was incorporated in 1850. With a population of 5,962 as of the 2010 census, Punxsutawney is the largest incorporated municipality in Jefferson County.

Shawnee wigwam villages next occupied this site upon the Mahoning Creek. The first harmony that included non-indigenous people was in 1772, when Reverend John Ettwein, a Moravian Church missionary, arrived as soon as a band of 241 Christianized Delaware Indians. Swarms of gnats plagued at the forefront settlers and their livestock for years, and are answerable for Ettwein’s failure to encourage a remaining settlement there. The clouds of harsh gnats eventually drove the Indians away. The Indians called the insects ponkies (living dust and ashes), and called their village Ponkis Utenink (land of the ponkies), from which the present name Punxsutawney evolved. One legend practically the stock of the term ponkies concerned an outdated Indian sorcerer-hermit who was said to have long terrorized Indians in the region. Eventually he was killed, his body burned, and his ashes were cast to the wind. According to the story, the ashes were transformed into minute active things that infested the swamp land. Another version about the source of the term asserted that the Indians compared the insect bites to burns caused by sparks or warm ashes.

The Place was originally settled by the Lenape Indian tribe, and a more definitive source says the declare Punxsutawney derives from a Native publicize in the Lenape language, Unami: Punkwsutènay, which translates to “town of the sandflies” or “town of the mosquitoes” (punkwës– ‘mosquito’ + –utènay ‘town’).
Alternatively, the say is said to the fore from unconventional Unami term, Put’schisk’tey, which means “poison vine.” The Shawnee and Delaware left Pennsylvania and had approved in Ohio by the decrease of the American Revolution.