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Pittston and West Pittston, PA, circa 1892.
Credit: American Memory, Library of Congress
A center of hard coal production in northeast Pennsylvania, Pittston and West Pittston - across the Susquehanna River - became home to a stove works, paper mill, box factory, brewery, fire brick and terra cotta works, and knitting mills in the late 1800s. After anthracite coal production slumped in the 1920s, Pittston and other coal towns transformed the Wyoming Valley into a national center of clothing manufacturing.