County text and building entries by Lawrence M. Newman and Robert Janosov
Despite having been settled in the eighteenth century, Lackawanna County was the commonwealth's last county to be formed. This took place in 1878 through secession from Luzerne County after a...
Scranton is a quintessential byproduct of the nation's Industrial Revolution: of Pennsylvania's largest cities it alone was created from whole cloth during the age of coal. In its astonishing rise, its equally rapid decline, and its varied attempts at recovery, it has embodied the...
The future site of Carbondale was purchased by Philadelphia entrepreneurs William and Maurice Wurts in 1812 and became a borough in 1831, but the real force that created it was the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company that used the town as a terminus for its coal shipping business. The...
Waverly's residential, community, and religious buildings offer a glimpse into northern Pennsylvania's New England–influenced architecture from the 1820s through the 1930s that has been restored and preserved as an exclusive suburb. Perfectly tended stone walls suggest a “way life...
County text and building entries by Patricia Likos Ricci
Columbia County is set in rolling hills that sweep down from the Pocono Plateau across the North Branch Susquehanna River. Pines and hemlocks, iron ore and anthracite, and fertile valleys attracted settlers...
Quaker Evan Owens laid out the town on the river across from the Nescopeck Falls in 1786 and named it after Berwick-on-Tweed, in England. A covered bridge (destroyed) was built across the Susquehanna between Berwick and Nescopeck in 1814 and the town was incorporated four...
Founded in 1802 in Bloom Township by Ludwig and John Adam Eyer, sons of German Lutheran emigrants from Alsace, Bloomsburg was initially called “Eyerstaedtel.” Ludwig, a dyer by trade, laid out ninety-seven lots on the north side of the Susquehanna. His brother, Adam, a...
The earliest reference to this site appears in a letter written from the Native American village of “Catawasse” by French Indian trader James Le Tort to Madame Montour in 1728. Conrad Weiser, Indian negotiator for Pennsylvania, referred to it as “Chief Lapackpitton's...
County text and building entries by Patricia Likos Ricci
Montour County (1850) was named in honor of the French Indian family who negotiated between the provincial government and the Native Americans. Isabella Couc, known as Madame Montour, and her son, Andrew, whose...
Danville began as a family business: after the Revolution, Colonel William Montgomery (1736–1816) relocated from Chester County to the narrow valley between the Montour Ridge and the North Branch Susquehanna. There along Mahoning Creek he developed an industrial village of saw, grist...
With the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Shawanese and Monsey tribes turned much of what is now the Northern Tier over to the province's proprietors, leading first to Quaker and Scots-Irish settlements along the Susquehanna...
Monroe County's development is the result of its mountainous setting, its multiple streams, and its proximity to the Delaware River. Glacial activity and the upheaval of the Appalachians left a landscape that is hilly, but with good soils in the bottom lands that attracted German...
Stroudsburg had its origins in Benjamin Franklin's Fort Hamilton on McMichael Creek. In his 1802 account of the region, “Journey to Bethlehem,” Philadelphian Joshua Gilpin reported that “settlers here are much more a lawless banditti and subject to more disorders of...
Monroe County was very much a part of the national scene in the years just before and after the Civil War when it was a nationally famous resort, rivaling Cape May, New Jersey, with more than fifty hotels, some of several hundred rooms. The site was first...
Cherry Valley follows Cherry Creek inland through a rich agricultural valley. Cherry Valley Road turns off Main Street (PA 611), in Delaware Water Gap, then follows a mountain ridge southwest to PA 191. It heads south briefly on PA 191 and then turns off to the west past half a...
The eastward course of PA 940 from Blakeslee to PA 191 passes many of the resorts that have begun to transform the Poconos into a contemporary vacationland. Just to the south off PA 314 is Pocono Manor with its early-twentieth-century Arts and Crafts inn...
North of Cresco on PA 390 is Mountainhome. Its center is marked by a handsome shingle-clad Methodist church that was begun in the 1850s. The present building incorporates a tower built in 1890 into the corner of a Shingle Style church that was added in 1913. Across...
Named for General Zebulon Pike, Pike County was organized in 1814 by partitioning Wayne County to accommodate the settlers who had come from New York and New England in contrast to the usual German and English migrations from the south. Its rugged landscape extends the geographic...
The village of Milford was settled in the 1730s when Dutch millwright Tom Quick established residence. It was Quick's death at the hands of Delaware Indians, still smarting over the infamous “Walking Purchase,” that precipitated his son's murderous trail of nearly 100 Indian dead. Tom...
Wayne County occupies the northern corner of Pennsylvania and is framed on the east and north by New York State. In 1798 it was one of the first counties created from the vast Northampton County and was named for the Revolutionary War hero General Anthony Wayne. Like other counties of...
Honesdale was depicted in Thomas Baldwin and J. Thomas's A New and Complete Gazetteer of the United States (1854) as a “place of much activity in business and is rapidly increasing. The prosperity of the place has been developed by manufactures of various kinds, and by the...
County text and building entries by Richard J. Webster
Susquehanna County is named for the Susquehanna River, which makes its entry from New York State into Pennsylvania along the county's northern border. The county's first settlers were from New England and they...
In 1790, nine men left Attleboro, Massachusetts, in search of good cheap land and found the well-drained land they were seeking in this area, as well as a warmer climate. They are known as the “Nine Partners” and, in 1890, Harford Township commemorated its centennial by erecting the...
When Montrose was incorporated as a borough in 1824, thirteen years after it became Susquehanna County's seat, it already had a newspaper, agricultural society, and bank—Silver Lake Bank, which still stands at 75 Church Street with an 1850 addition and a 1921 front. Isaac Post, from...
County text and building entries by Richard J. Webster
“Wyoming,” in the Delaware Indian language, means “a wide plain between mountains.” The name first identified the Susquehanna River valley in Luzerne County and later the western territory between the Black Hills...
Substantial houses on ample lots characterize Tunkhannock, whose name comes from the Indian word “tankhanne,” referring to the smaller of two converging streams. Here that stream is Tunkhannock Creek converging with the Susquehanna River at the borough's south end. Near that spot...
County text and building entries by Richard J. Webster
The North Branch Susquehanna River winds its way through the heart of Bradford County, cutting through successive ranges of hills to produce a picturesque landscape of steep escarpments towering over the river....
Established in 1765 as a Moravian mission to Christianize the Delaware Indians, Wyalusing (from Delaware Indian, meaning “home of the ancient warrior”) is probably Bradford County's oldest community, but all its buildings postdate 1820. The borough of approximately 700...
Towanda has been the seat of Bradford County since the county's founding in 1812. Originally named Meansville for its first settler, Scots-Irish entrepreneur William Means, who arrived c. 1786, in 1828 it was renamed Towanda, which is a Nanticoke and Delaware Indian...
