created: December 6, 2001

Scranton, PA was built around the iron empire of the Scranton family. This heritage is represented today by the restored trunks of four anthracite-fired blast furnaces near the Steamtown National Historic Site. They sit in a quiet, park-like environment where office workers now spend their lunch breaks away from the hectic pace of their post-industrial workplaces.

The remains of the hearth at the base of one of the Lackawanna blast furnace stacks.

This pastoral park-like scene in the middle of a city is a far cry from the crowded industrial complex that once thrived here. Blooming and rolling mills that converted pig iron from the stone furnace stacks to rails and structural shapes once occupied the right foreground of this view. The large building on the left horizon is the former passenger terminal of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western; today it is beautifully preserved and serves as Scranton's convention center.

An interpretive sign near the entrance to the park illustrates the advances in steam-powered blast engine technology that supplied the hot blast to the Lackawanna furnaces.

After the demise of Scranton's iron industry, the city still served as a major hub for railroads serving the Anthracite coal mining industry. While the Steamtown National Historic Site, based on the Scranton family's Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western RR facilities, is the most visible legacy of this era, other artifacts remain. One of these is the freight station of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, another "Anthracite Road." It stands across the street from Steamtown.

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