Lackawaxen

The Lackawaxen flows through wooded northeastern Pennsylvania to meet the Delaware River. Its name was recorded as Lechawachsein in a 1749 deed involving Haudenosaunee, Delaware and Shawnee claimants. Two branches come together above the river's lower course, which runs eastward through the hills to the Delaware.

In the 1820s the valley became part of a new route for carrying anthracite from the Lackawanna coalfields to the Hudson River. The Delaware and Hudson Canal followed the Lackawaxen from Honesdale to its mouth, where boats crossed the Delaware. Coal came over the Moosic Mountains to Honesdale by a gravity railroad and was transferred to canal boats for the journey east. The canal was built by thousands of labourers using picks, shovels and blasting powder.