Carbondale, Pennsylvania: The First Underground Mine
Near Scranton, Pennsylvania
In the early eighteen thirties, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company opened what is regarded as the first deep underground anthracite mine in the United States here in Carbondale. The engineers who made it possible, and the brothers William and Maurice Wurts who began buying and mining coal lands here in eighteen twelve, gave the coal-mining industry a model it would follow for the next century. Carbondale itself takes its name from the coal beneath it.
The gravity railroad that connected Carbondale to the canal terminus at Honesdale, roughly seventeen miles away, was a direct consequence of the coal here. A monument near the Seventh Avenue railroad crossing marks the original mine site. From this single shaft, one of America's defining industries grew.
