Lackawanna Iron
Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Iron was forged in Slocum Hollow by 1797. Nearby are remains of Lackawanna Iron Co. works begun 1840 by Scranton and associates. Iron rails for the Erie R.R. were made here, 1847. Steelmaking begun in 1875. Closed in 1902.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
This furnace helped give birth to a city — Scranton grew up around it — and its rails literally carried American expansion westward, making it a landmark of the iron-and-steel age that powered the nation's rise as an industrial power.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The valley that would become Scranton was industrial ground remarkably early. Iron was being forged in Slocum Hollow by 1797, when this part of northeastern Pennsylvania was still frontier country, thinly settled and far from the young nation's centers of commerce. Ironmaking here began, as it did in so many early American communities, wherever ore, water power, and fuel could be brought together.
By the early nineteenth century, the country's appetite for iron was growing fast. The Early Republic was building — bridges, tools, machinery — and above all it was about to build railroads. The Lackawanna Valley, with its resources and its ambitious newcomers, was poised to become far more than a scattering of frontier forges.
Into this setting stepped a group of investors and industrialists in 1840, ready to turn a modest ironmaking tradition into a large, organized enterprise. The works they began near Slocum Hollow would grow into one of the defining industries of the region.
People & events
In 1840, George W. Scranton, Selden T. Scranton, and their associates launched the works that became the Lackawanna Iron Company. The family name would eventually be carried by the whole city that grew up around the operation.
The defining early triumph came in 1847, when the furnaces here produced iron rails for the Erie Railroad. That was no small thing: rolling heavy iron rails was demanding, high-stakes work, and securing an order to help build a major railroad put the young company at the center of the era's most important industrial project.
The operation kept evolving with the times. Steelmaking began here in 1875, as the industry moved from iron toward the stronger, more versatile metal that would define the coming decades. The works ran on until 1902, when this chapter of the valley's industrial life finally closed — but by then the enterprise had already left ruins, a city, and a legacy behind it.
Its place in the American story
The rails made here did something concrete and national: they helped tie together the booming American railroad network. In the mid-nineteenth century, railroads were the arteries of the country's growth, and the iron rails rolled in this valley became part of the physical infrastructure that carried American expansion outward.
Just as importantly, this furnace helped give birth to a city. Scranton grew up around the ironworks, a classic American story in which heavy industry calls a community into being rather than the other way around. The company's arc — iron in the 1840s, rails in 1847, steel from 1875, closure in 1902 — traces the whole trajectory of the iron-and-steel age that powered the nation's rise as an industrial power.
To stand at these works is to stand at one of the sites where the United States remade itself from an agrarian republic into an industrial giant. The story here is local, but the metal made here traveled the country.
If you visit
Look for the remains of the ironworks near the marker and picture the scale of what once stood here: furnaces, mills, and the constant heat and noise of an operation large enough to help build railroads. The physical traces are fragments now, but they anchor an enormous story.
Think about the layers of time the marker compresses. Iron was forged nearby as far back as 1797; the company era ran from 1840 to 1902. You are looking at more than a century of industrial history folded into a single site, in a valley that shaped an entire American city.
This is an ideal stop for anyone interested in how the country was built — literally, in iron and steel. Pair it with a broader exploration of Scranton's industrial heritage, and let this furnace remind you that the city around you owes its very existence to the fires that once burned on this ground.
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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Related people
- · George W. Scranton
- · Selden T. Scranton
Related events
- · Founding of the Lackawanna Iron Company
- · Manufacture of iron rails for the Erie Railroad
Themes & tags
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