Noxen, PA

Noxen sits in Wyoming County’s Bowman Creek country, where Pennsylvania Route 29 follows a valley between fields, wooded ridges, and the larger roads west of Scranton. The community’s first identity was tied to timber and water. A Lehigh Valley Railroad station built in 1893 served the Bowman’s Creek branch, helping move lumber, tanning materials, and ice out of the valley. Noxen grew rapidly after a tannery opened in 1891, when hemlock bark from logging operations supplied the leather trade. For a time, the village had stores, hotels, blacksmiths, a school, and the traffic that came with a railroad stop.

That industrial past still shows in the way Noxen sits along the creek and route. The village is a CDP within Noxen Township, and the surrounding hills quickly turn from homes and farms to forest. Schooley’s Peak and nearby wind turbines add a modern silhouette to the ridge country, while the old station stands as a reminder of the line that connected this pocket of the Endless Mountains to Wilkes-Barre and Towanda. The 2020 census counted 643 residents. Noxen is the kind of place where a small main street carries a surprisingly large regional story: lumber, leather, ice, rail, and the creek that brought them together.