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 operations of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. Its houses are mostly built of wood and present a neat appearance. Honesdale contains 6 churches, 1 bank, 1 academy, and two newspaper offices. It was laid out in 1826, incorporated in 1831, and became the county seat in 1842.” The Gazetteerdescribed the town as having a population of 4,500—almost exactly what it is today. The result is a town that is largely frozen in its past with building activities of consequence largely stopping in the early twentieth century.
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