Lackawanna County
Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed August 13, 1878 from Luzerne County, it was Pennsylvania's 67th and last county created. The name is an Indian word meaning "stream that forks." Scranton, the county seat, was made a city, 1866. It became the anthracite coal mining capital of the world.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The last of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, Lackawanna was carved from Luzerne County in 1878, its name drawn from a Native word for a forking stream. Its heart was Scranton, a city that rose on the black wealth beneath it: hard anthracite coal. By the late nineteenth century the region had become, by its own proud claim, the anthracite mining capital of the world, drawing waves of immigrant laborers into its collieries and coal towns.
Why it matters
Lackawanna County stands at the center of America's anthracite empire, the coal that heated the cities and fired the industry of the Gilded Age.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Lackawanna County was born late — in 1878, in the industrial heat of the Gilded Age — and it holds a distinction no other Pennsylvania county can claim: it was the 67th and last county the state ever created. By the time it was carved from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania's map was essentially complete, and this final piece was added because industry had made the region simply too populous and important to leave undivided.
The name reaches back far beyond the industrial era. Drawn from a Native word meaning "stream that forks," it preserves the older identity of the land even as the county became a symbol of modern industry — a reminder that the valley had a history long before the collieries arrived.
This was the age of coal, steam, and immigrant labor, when regions rich in fuel could grow from quiet valleys into industrial powerhouses within a single generation. Lackawanna County was one of the great examples of that transformation.
People & events
At the center of the county stands Scranton, and its rise is the county's real story. The city had already been incorporated in 1866, and it grew explosively into what the marker proudly calls the anthracite coal mining capital of the world.
The engine of that growth was anthracite — the hard, clean-burning coal buried beneath the region. Mining it drew wave after wave of immigrant laborers into the collieries and coal towns, workers who came from many lands to do dangerous, essential work deep underground. The county's population and its very existence as a separate county were byproducts of that enormous human effort.
The creation of the county in 1878 can be read as the political recognition of what the miners and the coal trade had already built. The industry came first; the county line was drawn to catch up with a region that coal had already remade.
Its place in the American story
Anthracite from this region did far more than enrich a single county — it helped power the United States. Hard coal heated the homes of great cities and fired the furnaces of industry, and the valley that called itself the anthracite capital of the world sat at the center of that supply.
The county is also a portrait of Gilded Age America in miniature: immense industrial wealth pulled from the ground, and immense human labor pulled from across the world to extract it. The immigrant communities that formed around the mines are part of the larger story of how industrializing America was built by newcomers as much as by capital.
And there is a fitting symbolism in the county's place in the record. As the very last county Pennsylvania created, Lackawanna marks the moment when industry, not agriculture or frontier settlement, had become powerful enough to redraw a state's map — a clear signal of the nation's transformation in the age of coal.
If you visit
Scranton wears its coal heritage openly, and that makes it a rewarding place to explore the industrial past. As you move through the city and the surrounding valley, remember that the prosperity written into its older buildings was pulled, ton by ton, from the anthracite seams beneath your feet.
Look for the marks the industry left on the landscape and the community — the shape of the coal towns, the mix of people whose ancestors came here to work the mines, the pride in a place that once claimed to be the anthracite capital of the world. This is a region that remembers what it was built on.
Use the marker as a starting point for thinking about both ends of the county's name and story: the Native word for a forking stream that anchors it to a deep past, and the last-in-the-state county line that ties it to the height of America's industrial age. For a road trip through northeastern Pennsylvania, it's a powerful place to feel the weight of the coal era.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Carbon County
Jim Thorpe, PA · est. 1982
Carbon County, formed in 1843 from Northampton and Monroe, was named outright for the element at the heart of its wealth: the rich anthracite coal beds that fueled America's industrial rise. Its seat began life as Mauch Chunk, a booming coal-shipping town on the Lehigh, and in 1954 took the name Jim Thorpe to honor the great Native American athlete, whose remains were brought there. The renaming stitched a legendary Olympian's memory to a hard-coal town.
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.
1902 Anthracite Coal Strike
Scranton, PA · est. 2002
In May 1902, roughly 150,000 anthracite miners walked off the job across northeastern Pennsylvania, staying out for six months over union recognition, better pay, and shorter hours. With the nation's coal supply threatened, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, which held hearings at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton and granted several of the miners' demands in 1903.
Coal Miners' and Laborers' Strike
Scranton, PA · est. 2008
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.