Pittston Township

About Pittston Township

Pittston Township was one of five original townships surveyed in 1768 under the Susquehanna Company, the Connecticut land venture that claimed the Wyoming Valley. It was first called Pittstown, named for Sir William Pitt, the English statesman. The township sits in Luzerne County, wrapped around the northern and eastern edges of the city of Pittston, roughly midway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.

Coal built the township. Mining patches such as Browntown and McCarthyville, later called Cork Lane, held close to a thousand residents each by the early 1890s, drawing immigrant families to work the anthracite seams. Deep mining carried the local economy for generations, then collapsed after the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster ended most deep anthracite operations across the northern Wyoming Valley.