In the late 18th century, pioneers moving west through the woodlands of northeastern Pennsylvania settled where three streams converged, built a sawmill, and rafted lumber down the Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers to Philadelphia. The settlement’s first child was born in 1812 and its first store opened in 1827. Hawley’s early history became closely tied to moving anthracite coal from the Lackawanna Valley to eastern markets. The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company built its 108 mile canal through downtown during the 1820s, with coal first brought from Carbondale to Honesdale by the Gravity Railroad and then loaded onto canal boats. Intense demand for coal led the Pennsylvania Coal Company to build a second Gravity Railroad in the late 1840s from Pittston to Dunmore to Lake Ariel to Hawley, where its coal was loaded into boats in the canal basin until 1865. That year the Erie Railroad built a spur from Lackawaxen to Hawley, after which Pennsylvania Coal Company coal was transferred to the Erie Railroad there; in 1885 the Erie extended its steam railroad to the Lackawanna Valley and the Pennsylvania Coal Company Gravity Railroad was abandoned. These transportation links brought great prosperity, with people working at transfer docks, train car and repair shops, storehouses, and other businesses. The town was first known as Paupack Eddy, then Falls Port, then Hawleysburg in honor of Irad Hawley, the first president of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, before its name was shortened in 1851 to Hawley. The canal basin across the river was later filled in and became a playing field, and in 1929 the Albert W. Bingham family donated that land to the borough as a park bearing the family’s name. After its lumber and coal beginnings, Hawley developed other industries including fine cut glass and silk and textile mills. Another period of growth began in 1925, when the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company dammed nearby Wallenpaupack Creek for hydroelectric power and created what was then the state’s largest man-made lake, opening new recreational and business opportunities that continue today.