Scranton is the sixth-largest city in the State of Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie and Reading. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County in the state’s northeastern region and is also the central point for the federal court of the area. With a population of 76,089, it is the largest city in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a greater population of about 570,000, also known as the Wyoming Valley.
Scranton is the geographic and cultural center of the Lackawanna River valley, and the largest of the former anthracite coal mining communities in a contiguous quilt-work that also includes Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, and Carbondale. Scranton was incorporated as a borough on February 14, 1856, and as a city on April 23, 1866. The city “took its first step toward earning its reputation as the Electric City” when electric lights were introduced at Dickson Locomotive Works in 1880. Six years later, the nation’s first streetcars powered exclusively by electricity began operating in the city. Rev. David Spencer, a local Baptist minister, later proclaimed Scranton the “Electric City.”