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The Wyoming Valley is a historic industrialized region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The region is historically notable for its influence in helping fuel the American Industrial Revolution with its many anthracite . As a metropolitan area, it is known as the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, after its principal cities, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. With a population of 567,559 as of the 2020 United States census, it is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, after the Delaware Valley, Greater Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley, and the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical areas.
Within the geology of Pennsylvania the Wyoming Valley makes up its own unique physiographic province, the Anthracite Valley. Greater Pittston occupies the center of the valley. Scranton is the most populated city in the metropolitan area with a population of 77,114. The city of Scranton grew in population after the 2015 mid-term census while Wilkes-Barre declined in population. Wilkes-Barre remains the second most-populated city in the metropolitan area, while Hazleton is the third most-populated city in the metropolitan area.
The valley is a crescent-shaped depression, a part of the ridge-and-valley or folded Appalachians. The Susquehanna River occupies the southern part of the valley, which is notable for its deposits of anthracite. These have been extensively mined. Deep mining of anthracite has declined throughout the greater Coal Region, however, due to the greater economics of strip mining. Parts of the local mines had already shut down because some coal beds were on fire and had to be sealed, but the exodus of mining companies came quickly following the legal and political repercussions of the 1959 Knox Mine disaster when the roof of the Knox Coal Company's mine under the Susquehanna River collapsed.
The Pocono Mountains, a ridgeline away, are often visible from higher elevations to the east and to the southeast of the Wyoming Valley.The Poconos being bounded by the Lehigh River Valley on their west side, whose east bank watershed begins on the drainage divide of the Penobscot Knob ridgeline east of the Valley.
According to The Jesuit Relations in 1635, the Wyoming Valley was inhabited by the Scahentoarrhonon people, an Iroquoian-speaking group; it was then known as the Scahentowanen Valley. By 1744, it was inhabited by Lenape, Mohican, Shawnee and others who had been pushed out of eastern areas by the Iroquois Confederacy. From the 1740s to the 1760s, the valley was the site of Moravian Church mission work among the Native Americans living there. They envisioned a settlement for Christian Munsee. But the violence of the French and Indian War, known outside the U.S. as part of the Seven Years' War, drove these settlers away with David Zeisberger, the Moravian Church "Apostle to the Indians."
This led to conflicting claims to the territory by the colonies of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. King Charles II of England granted the land to the Colony of Connecticut in 1662, and then to William Penn in 1681, who established the Province of Pennsylvania, leading to military skirmishes known as the Pennamite–Yankee War. After Yankee settlers from Connecticut founded Wilkes-Barre in 1769, armed bands of Pennsylvanians, known as Pennamites, tried unsuccessfully to expel them between 1769 and 70, and then again in 1775.
This led the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pass a resolution creating Luzerne County. This ended the idea of creating a new state. On September 25, 1786, Luzerne County was formed from part of Northumberland County. It was named after Chevalier de la Luzerne, a French soldier and diplomat during the 18th century. When it was founded, Luzerne County occupied a large portion of Northeastern Pennsylvania. From 1810 to 1878, it was divided into several smaller counties. The counties of Bradford, Lackawanna, Susquehanna, and Wyoming were all formed from parts of Luzerne County.
As of the 2000 census, the area also had the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites of any U.S. metropolitan area with a population over 500,000, with 96.2% of the population stating their race as white alone and not claiming Hispanic ethnicity, however the Hispanic demographic has been significantly rising since then.
When metropolitan areas were first defined in 1950, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre were in separate metropolitan areas. Lackawanna County was defined as the Scranton Standard Metropolitan Area, while Luzerne County was defined as the Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton metropolitan area. The two metropolitan areas were merged after the 1970 census as the Northeast Pennsylvania Standard metropolitan statistical area, with Monroe County added as a component. It was renamed the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metropolitan statistical area after the 1980 census, and Columbia and Wyoming counties were added. Hazleton was added as a primary city in the 1990 census, while Monroe County lost its metropolitan status.
After the 2000 census, Columbia County lost metropolitan status, while Hazleton was removed as a primary city. Scranton is the largest city in Lackawanna County as well as the entire metropolitan area by a large margin, nearly doubling the population of the second largest city in the metropolitan area, Wilkes Barre.
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In the science-fiction story Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan, American Radioactive Gas Corporation employee Buck Rogers is investigating an abandoned coal mine in the Wyoming Valley when a cave-in traps him. A gas which fills the mine shaft places him in suspended animation for nearly 500 years. He awakens to find that the United States has been destroyed by a Chinese invasion, and he joins a "gang" of Americans who survive by hiding in the forests of the Wyoming Valley area. With the help of Buck's experience as a soldier in World War I, they unite all of the scattered Americans in a "Second War of Independence" against the "Han" colonial administration.
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