East Stroudsburg: Gateway to the Poconos

The story of East Stroudsburg begins with Daniel Brodhead, who settled along the creek that still bears his name around seventeen thirty-seven. His settlement was attacked and destroyed in seventeen fifty-five during the French and Indian War. The land sat quiet until Jacob Stroud, a former indentured servant, built mills at the junction of three creeks in seventeen sixty.

The town that grew around his mills became Stroudsburg. East Stroudsburg came later, born when the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad reached the area in the eighteen fifties and built a station in the eighteen sixties, and hotels clustered around it to receive visitors headed for the Pocono Mountains. The two towns share a border and a name but grew from opposite sides of the tracks.