Hughestown, PA

Hughestown is a Luzerne County borough in Greater Pittston, incorporated in 1879 after growing out of Pittston Township. Coal put it on the map, especially the No. 9 Breaker operated by the Pennsylvania Coal Company. In January 1911, photographer Lewis Hine documented the borough's breaker boys, and those pictures still make Hughestown one of the places where the human cost of anthracite mining is impossible to gloss over. U.S. 11 runs through the southern part of the borough, and Robert Yaple Memorial Park gives the town a present-day landmark. The local shorthand is coal town, Hine photographs, and a borough beside Pittston.