Scranton, Pennsylvania
We drive southwest from Cooperstown along the foothills of the Catskills to Scranton, Pennsylvania, “The Electric City,” where we stop by downtown before visiting the Steamtown National Historic Site and the Electric City Trolley Museum.
Just south of Cooperstown, Dad and I were dazzled by a large field of sunflowers cheerfully facing the rising sun — a shock of yellow amongst the rural greenery. We had to stop for a moment to take it in properly.
We could have plotted a faster route from Cooperstown to Scranton — west on the interstate through Binghamton, New York. Had the Minor League Binghamton Rumble Ponies been in town that week, we would have included them in our schedule and made that our next stop. Since they weren’t, Dad and I settled on a more rural path for the day, driving southwest along the forested Catskills, through the small towns of Walton and Hancock, and across the western branch of the Delaware River into northeastern Pennsylvania.
The rugged hills eventually gave way to modest lakes and swampier lowlands as we approached Scranton.
Downtown Scranton
We arrived under gloomy skies that threatened to make our day gloomier. We knew there would be some rain during the day and night but held out hope that our next ballgame with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders would go off as planned.The RailRiders have the most complicated name in all of baseball due to the nature of the Scranton area itself. It is a city of more than 75,000 but is part of a contiguous string of cities and boroughs along the Wyoming Valley’s Lackawanna and Susquehanna rivers that together make up a metropolitan area of more than half a million residents. Wilkes-Barre lies on the southwestern side of region and is named for John Wilkes and Isaac Barré, two members of the British Parliament who supported America’s quest for independence.
The first colonial settlers arrived in Scranton in 1778. By the 1840s, the Industrial Age had arrived in the valley, and with it brothers Selden T. and George W. Scranton, who founded the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company and later the Lackawanna Steel Company.
I dropped Dad off at our restaurant and parked the car up the street near the Lackawanna County Courthouse, originally built in 1884 and thoroughly renovated in 2008. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, along with its statue of John Mitchell, who was president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1898-1908. Mitchell led a strike of anthracite coal miners in 1902, demanding higher wages and shorter workdays for the region's leading industry.
Our lunch spot for the day was The Garden, a Mediterranean spot with a cozy and colorful dining room. Dad had the Falafel Wrap, with fried chickpeas, garlic, hummus, tabouleh, pickled turnips, and salad in a pita wrap; and I had a tasty lamb gyro wrap.
Steamtown
Refreshed, we drove to the nearby Steamtown National Historic Site, located at the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). An earnest rain arrived just before us.The Scranton brothers, who had previous experience producing pig iron back in New Jersey, focused their efforts in the Wyoming Valley on producing rails for the burgeoning railroad industry. They built the original Lackawanna and Western Railroad, connecting the valley north to the Erie Railroad, and used their own rails to transport rail products across the country. The Scrantons then expanded their network east toward New York City, adopting the DL&W name. The railroad line’s hub remained in Scranton and was the city’s leading employer for nearly 100 years.
The historic site has a collection of more than 20 locomotives, with a working turntable and roundhouse. It includes tours, guided talks, and two museum wings chronicling the history and culture of railroads and the iron horses that continue to fascinate hobbyists.
Left: E.J. Lavino & Company #3, an industrial switcher built in 1927 to haul containers of water from the Poland Springs plant in Poland, Maine. Right: New Haven Trap Rock Company #43, a switch engine built in 1919 and used for work at a Connecticut quarry.
Most of the locomotives, rail cars, and other equipment at the park were collected by Francis Nelson Blount, who founded the Blount Seafood Corporation in New England. Blount was fascinated by trains from an early age, spending time as a child in the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad yards near his Rhode Island home. After moving to New Hampshire in the 1950s, Blount began to use his business fortune to buy rail lines and locomotives. He opened the original “Steamtown U.S.A.” in New Hampshire in 1963, but after his sudden death in 1967, the attraction and its expansion plans fell into disarray.
Steamtown moved to Scranton in 1984 and soon went bankrupt. The federal government took over in 1986 to save the historic collection, and the current park opened in 1995.
New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad ("Nickel Plate Road") 759, built in 1944.
Louisville & Nashville Railroad Post Office Car, built in 1914.
A miniature version of the Phoebe Snow Lackawanna 760, which ran at Nay Aug Park in Scranton.
Electric City Trolley Museum
Next door to Steamtown is the Electric City Trolley Museum, which reinforces Scranton’s nickname of “The Electric City,” earned in 1880 when electric lights were installed in town at the Dickson Manufacturing Company, maker of steam engines, boilers, and blast furnaces. In 1886, the first electric streetcars in the United States were powered up in Scranton.Housed in a 19th century mill building, the museum boasts an impressive display of vintage trolleys and other exhibits, plus regular excursions in warmer months. However, a large section of the museum was closed when we arrived, so we cut our visit short and headed to our hotel to rest up for Ballpark #18 — weather permitting.