Hawley, PA

Hawley is a Wayne County borough on the Lackawaxen River, and its local story starts with coal moving through the hills. The Pennsylvania Coal Company chose Hawley as the terminus of its gravity railroad in 1840, and the borough grew as a transportation and manufacturing support town for the mines. Irad Hawley, the company's first president, supplied the name. The river still runs through the center, but the old coal route is now joined by a different kind of water story: Lake Wallenpaupack and the surrounding lakes, golf courses, and outdoor facilities shape the modern calendar.

Hawley's schools are part of the Wallenpaupack Area district, with the main elementary, middle, and high schools a few miles away near the lake. That arrangement says something about the borough's scale: downtown Hawley is small, while the larger local landscape stretches along water, roads, and former industrial corridors. The old coal connection has not disappeared; it is built into the town's name, river, and street pattern. Hawley is a Pocono foothill borough where a gravity railroad, a working river, and a later lake economy all occupy the same map.