Hazleton is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 29,963 at the 2020 census. Hazleton is the second-most populous city in Luzerne County. It was incorporated as a borough on January 5, 1857, and as a city on December 4, 1891.
Hazleton is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania, northwest of Allentown, north-northwest of Philadelphia and west of New York City.
History
During the early years of European colonization in the Americas, the area which today makes up the city of Hazleton sat at the intersection of two Native American trails.
The Nanticoke path was used by the Nanticoke people during their migration to and settlement of the Wyoming Valley, east of Wilkes-Barre.
The Nescopeck path ran from the forks of the Delaware River, to the Nescopeck Creek. It was used by traders and missionaries, Delaware war parties, and settlers.
Sugarloaf massacre
During the height of the American Revolution, in the summer of 1780, British sympathizers (known as Tories) began attacking the outposts of American revolutionaries located along the Susquehanna River in the Wyoming Valley. Because of reports of Tory activity in the region, Captain Daniel Klader and a platoon of 41 men from Northampton County were sent to investigate. They traveled north from the Lehigh Valley along a path known as "Warrior's Trail" (which is present-day Pennsylvania Route 93). This route connects the Lehigh River in Jim Thorpe (formerly known as Mauch Chunk) to the Susquehanna River in Berwick.
Captain Klader's men made it as far north as present-day Conyngham, when they were ambushed by Tory militiamen and members of the Seneca tribe. In all, 15 men were killed on September 11, 1780, in what is now known as the Sugarloaf massacre.
The Moravians, a Christian denomination, had been using "Warrior's Trail" since the early 18th century after the Moravian missionary Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf first used it to reach the Wyoming Valley. This particular stretch of "Warrior's Trail" had an abundance of hazel trees. Though the Moravians called the region "St. Anthony's Wilderness", it eventually became known as "Hazle Swamp", a name which had been used previously by the Native Americans. The Moravian missionaries were sent from their settlements in Bethlehem to the site of the Sugarloaf Massacre to bury the dead soldiers. Some Moravians decided to stay, and in 1782, they built a settlement (St. Johns) along the Nescopeck Creek, which is near the present-day intersection of Interstates 80 and 81.Greater Hazleton Historical Society
Jacob Drumheller In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Warrior's Trail was revamped and widened. It was renamed the Lausanne-Nescopeck Turnpike. Later, a road was built to connect Wilkes-Barre to McKeansburg. This road intersected with the Berwick Turnpike. An entrepreneur named Jacob Drumheller decided that this intersection was the perfect location for a rest stop, so in 1809, he built the first building in what would later be known as Hazleton. Though a few buildings and houses were erected nearby, the area remained a dense wilderness for nearly 20 years. At the time, the area offered little more than small-scale logging. Jacob Drumheller is buried at Conyngham Union Cemetery.
Discovery of coal
In 1818, anthracite coal deposits were discovered in nearby Beaver Meadows by prospectors Nathaniel Beach and Tench Coxe. This caught the attention of railroad developers in Philadelphia. A young engineer from New York named Ariovistus "Ario" Pardee was hired to survey the topography of Beaver Meadows and report the practicality of extending a railroad from the Lehigh Canal in Jim Thorpe to Beaver Meadows. Knowing that the area of Beaver Meadows was already controlled by Coxe and Beach, Pardee bought many acres of the land in present-day Hazleton. The investment proved to be lucrative. The land contained part of a massive anthracite coal field. Pardee is known as the founding father of Hazleton because of these contributions and initially laying out the patch town that eventually became Hazleton.
Pardee incorporated the Hazleton Coal Company in 1836, the same year the rail link to the Lehigh Valley market was on the brink of being completed. Hazleton Coal Company built the first school on Church Street, where Hazleton City Hall is now located. Pardee also built the first church in Hazleton, located at the intersection of Church and Broad Streets, and the first private school in Hazleton, located on the south side of Broad Street between Wyoming and Laurel Streets. Pardee died in 1892. The following year, in 1893, his son, Israel Platt Pardee, built a three-story, 19-room mansion in Hazleton; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
The anthracite coal industry attracted many immigrants for labor. The first wave, in the 1840s and 1850s, consisted mostly of German and Irish immigrants. The second wave, from the 1860s to the 1920s, consisted mostly of Italian, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Montenegrin immigrants. The coal mined in Hazleton helped establish the United States as a world industrial power, including fueling the massive blast furnaces at Bethlehem Steel.Greater Hazleton Historical Society
Incorporation
Hazleton was incorporated as a borough on January 5, 1857. A persistent story purporting that the borough's name was intended to be "Hazelton" but was misspelled by a clerk during its incorporation is most likely an urban legend. The name was spelled with "le" rather than "el" in the earliest references to the Hazleton Coal Co. (1836) and to the town itself. Perhaps the earliest map showing Hazleton (with the "le" spelling) was published in 1843 by Sydney E. Morse & Co. The borough's first fire company, the Pioneer Fire Company, was organized in 1867 by soldiers returning home from the American Civil War.
Many small company towns, often referred to by locals as "patch towns" or "patches", surrounded Hazleton. They were built by coal companies to provide housing for the miners and their families. The following is a list of "patch towns" constructed in and around Hazleton: Beaver Meadows, coal was discovered here Stockton, founded by John Stockton Jeansville, founded by James Milens Milnesville, founded by James Milens Tresckow, formerly known as Dutchtown Junedale, formerly known as Colraine Freeland, originally called Freehold (founded by Joseph Birkbeck in 1846) McAdoo, originally called Pleasant Hill, then Saylors Hill West Hazleton, founded by Conrad Horn Eckley, founded by Eckley B. Coxe Jeddo, named after a Japanese port to which coal was exported by the Hazleton Coal Company Hollywood, part of Hazleton, named before Hollywood, California Weatherly, a small borough outside of Hazleton Humboldt Village, a tiny village outside of Hazleton
Prosperity and tragedy
As industry and commerce developed, so did the footprint of organized labor. Nineteenth century attempts by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to organize in the anthracite region were largely unsuccessful.
On September 10, 1897, after several weeks of escalating walkouts and strikes at surrounding mines, the Lattimer Massacre occurred when 300-400 strikers near Hazleton marched to the Lattimer Mine to support a newly formed UMW local. Nineteen unarmed striking miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, and German ethnicity, were shot and killed in a confrontation with the Luzerne County sheriff's posse.Anderson, John W. Transitions: From Eastern Europe to Anthracite Community to College Classroom. Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2005; Miller, Randall M. and Pencak, William. Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth. State College, Penn.: Penn State Press, 2003; Scores more were wounded.Estimates of the number of wounded are inexact. They range from a low of 17 wounded (Duwe, Grant. Mass Murder in the United States: A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007; ) to as many as 49 injured (DeLeon, Clark. Pennsylvania Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff. 3rd rev. ed. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot, 2008; ). Other estimates include 30 wounded (Lewis, Ronald L. Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; ), 32 wounded (Anderson, Transitions: From Eastern Europe to Anthracite Community to College Classroom, 2005; Berger, Stefan; Croll, Andy; and Laporte, Norman. Towards A Comparative History of Coalfield Societies. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005; ; Campion, Joan. Smokestacks and Black Diamonds: A History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania. Easton, Penn.: Canal History and Technology Press, 1997; ), 35 wounded (Foner, Philip S. First Facts of American Labor: A Comprehensive Collection of Labor Firsts in the United States. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984; ; Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, 2003; Derks, Scott. Working Americans, 1880–2006: Volume VII: Social Movements. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2006; ), 38 wounded (Weir, Robert E. and Hanlan, James P. Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004; ), 39 wounded (Long, Priscilla. Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry. Minneapolis: Paragon House, 1989; ; Novak, Michael. The Guns of Lattimer. Reprint ed. New York: Transaction Publishers, 1996; ), and 40 wounded (Beers, Paul B. The Pennsylvania Sampler: A Biography of the Keystone State and Its People. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1970). The massacre was a turning point in the history of the UMW, with over 10,000 new members signing cards in its aftermath. However, the UMW would not be able to capitalize on this momentum and obtain union recognition in the Leigh Valley until the 20th century.Blatz, Perry K. Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875–1925. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994
Hazleton was also struck by several mining disasters. Notable among these were the cave-ins at Sheppton, Jeanesville, and Stockton.
Mining disasters were not the only tragedies. In October 1888, a train crash killed 66 people near Mud Run when one passenger train crashed into the rear of another train on their way to White Haven. It was one of the worst train wrecks recorded in United States history.
In 1891, Hazleton became the third city in the United States to establish a citywide electric grid. Hazleton was incorporated as a city on December 4, 1891. At the time, the population was estimated to be around 14,000 people.
In the second half of the 19th century, middle class professionals whose industries serviced the mining economy led an effort to diversify the economy in Hazleton and attract large scale manufacturing employers, who could hire from the area's large pool of unemployed women. The local improvement associations who led this initiative were successful in attracting a number of firms, including several mills and a brewery. The Duplan Silk Corporation opened in Hazleton in 1899, with financial support from local banks, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and $10,000 from a fundraising drive.
20th and 21st centuries
Leading into the 20th century, Hazleton's population drastically changed. The "boom period" in population was 1885 to 1920. In 1860, there were only about one thousand people in Hazleton, but by 1880, there were nearly seven thousand people, which quickly became thirty-two thousand by 1920. After the 1900 and 1902 anthracite coal strikes, mine workers won some improvements to their working conditions, which they were able to build upon in ensuing contracts. The diversification of the city's economy stabilized the population by allowing miners to establish families in the area, with women and children often working in silk or shirt manufacturing for supplemental wages.