Scranton Iron Furnaces

Scranton was founded as an ironmaking community after the natural resources of the Lackawanna Valley attracted William Henry, the Scrantons, the Platts, and their associates in the late 1830's. Coal, waterpower, limestone, and iron ore provided everything needed for making iron, and the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company built its first blast furnace in 1841 and added four more by 1855, while rolling mills and steel mills spread along Roaring Brook. William Henry, a New Jersey speculator, bought the site at Slocum Hollow in 1838 to build an iron furnace. George and Selden Scranton, brothers and owners of the Oxford Furnace in New Jersey, came to the Lackawanna Valley in 1840, and Selden was William Henry's son-in-law. Joseph Platt, one of the original owners of Lackawanna Iron and Coal, operated the first company store. Joseph H. Scranton, a cotton broker from Georgia and cousin of George and Selden, provided financial backing, came to the iron furnace in 1848, and eventually became superintendent. Around the ironworks, houses and stores were built and communities developed schools and churches. Immigrants came to the valley to work in the ironworks and mines, to build railroads, and to drive the steam locomotives that ran on them, while the growing city attracted textile mills, machine shops, and foundries. The need for railroads to haul ore to the mines and anthracite coal to market created the ironworks' principal product, and in 1847 the company began manufacturing iron T-rail for the Erie Railroad. As railroads expanded across the continent, the fortunes of the ironworks grew, and in the 1860s Lackawanna Iron and Coal was the second largest ironworks in the United States. Steel mills were added in 1876, and by 1900 the renamed Lackawanna Iron and Steel employed 3000 workers. With the new century, an era ended as the rich iron ores of the Great Lakes region and the use of coke to fuel blast furnaces drew the company to Lackawanna, New York; beginning in 1901 the works were closed and the mills were demolished.

Scranton, Pennsylvania · United States