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The Lackawanna River Heritage Trail follows the Lackawanna River up the anthracite valley from Taylor, through downtown Scranton, and onward through the Mid Valley boroughs of Olyphant, Peckville, Archbald, Jermyn, and Mayfield to Carbondale and Simpson, where it hands off to the D & H Rail Trail. Most of it is paved or stone dust on old railroad grades, with a dirt and grass stretch on top of the Scranton flood levee and a few short on-road links around Blakely. The grade is rail-trail gentle the whole way, climbing steadily but never steeply toward Carbondale. Expect a mix of riverside woods, open levee, active rail lines beside you, and town parks every few miles.
Lackawanna River Heritage Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail has about 116 to 162 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, biking, running, birding, and walking, with May, September, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail peaks October 16 to 26, typically around October 21. The trail has 47% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, chestnut oak, northern red oak, and sweet birch.
Coal was coming out of the ground near Racket Brook, above Carbondale, by 1820. The Delaware and Hudson company built a gravity railroad to carry it over the mountain to its canal and on to the Hudson River. In 1852 investors chartered the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad to open the lower valley around Scranton. By the late 1880s Scranton was one of the nation's leading industrial centers, built on coal, railroading, iron, and textiles. The Erie built the D&H Jefferson Branch from Carbondale to Lanesboro to replace the gravity line, and the first coal trains ran north on it in 1870. The New York, Ontario and Western finished its own line out of Scranton in 1888 to move the mounting tonnage. The Central Railroad of New Jersey ran a line through Taylor and Scranton, and its freight station still stands downtown. As the mines closed, the railroads let those corridors fade. In 1991 the state created the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority as Pennsylvania's first State Heritage Park, and Congress added a National Heritage Area designation in 2000. The Authority has spent more than twenty years stitching the abandoned railbeds, mine lands, flood levees, and town parks into one trail. Its sections carry the names of the railroads that built them, such as the Central NJ RR sections in Scranton. About 17 miles are now finished between Scranton and Carbondale, with the Simpson end joining the D & H Rail Trail toward the New York line.
