Coal Miners' and Laborers' Strike
Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A riot occurred here on August 1, 1877, in which armed citizens fired upon strikers, killing four. Many were injured, including Scranton's mayor. As in numerous US cities, this labor unrest was a result of the US depression of 1873 and a nationwide railroad strike in 1877.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On August 1, 1877, the anthracite city of Scranton erupted in violence as armed citizens fired on striking workers, killing four and wounding many, including the mayor. The clash was a local flashpoint of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the nationwide upheaval that spread through cities gripped by the depression that began in 1873. Coal miners and laborers here joined a wave of workers demanding relief from wage cuts and hard times.
Why it matters
The Scranton bloodshed was part of America's first nationwide labor uprising, a turning point that forced the country to confront the conflicts of its industrializing economy.
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Related events
- · Great Railroad Strike of 1877
- · Panic of 1873
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Electric Cars
Scranton, PA · est. 1948
On November 30, 1886, Scranton launched what is celebrated as the first street railway system in the United States built entirely for electric operation, running between the city center and the Green Ridge section. In an age when most urban transit still relied on horses, this was a bold leap into a new technology. The achievement earned Scranton its enduring nickname, the Electric City.
Lackawanna Iron
Scranton, PA · est. 1947
Long before Scranton was a city, iron was already being forged in the woods of Slocum Hollow as early as 1797. In 1840 the Scranton family and their partners launched the works that became the Lackawanna Iron Company, and in 1847 the furnaces here rolled iron rails for the Erie Railroad — helping tie together the nation's booming rail network. The company added steelmaking in 1875, riding the Gilded Age industrial surge, before the operation finally closed in 1902.
William W. Scranton (1917-2013)
Scranton, PA · est. 2016
William W. Scranton belonged to the family whose name the city bears, and he came of age as its anthracite economy was fading. A World War II pilot, he served in Congress and then as governor of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, pushing to modernize the state's industry, highways, schools, and welfare programs. His later roles as a United Nations ambassador and adviser to presidents made him a national figure across decades of public life.
The "Pioneer" marker
Scranton, PA
In the mid-19th century, northeastern Pennsylvania's anthracite fields ran on ingenious gravity railroads — lines that let loaded coal cars coast downhill by their own weight, with stationary steam engines hauling the empties back up a chain of inclined planes. The Pennsylvania Coal Company's route carried anthracite between the mines around Pittston and the canal at Hawley for more than three decades. This surviving 'Pioneer' car, retired when the gravity line gave way to conventional steam locomotives, was handed over to the City of Scranton in 1909 as a relic of that vanished technology.