Scranton, one of the important towns of Osage county, is located in Scranton township on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R., 14 miles northwest of Lyndon, the county seat. It has a weekly newspaper (the Gazette), banking facilities, all lines of mercantile enterprise, good schools and churches. The chief occupations of the people are coal mining and agriculture. Coal, live stock, grain and produce are shipped. There are telegraph and express offices, and a money order postoffice with four rural routes. The population according to the census of 1910 was 770.

Scranton was started as a mining camp in 1871, when Alexander Thomas and O. H. Sheldon sank a shaft. The next year the Burlingame and Scranton Coal company was formed and until 1875 the interests of this company were the principal business of the town. The coal interests then began to be developed and several other shafts were sunk by companies and private individuals. Things went slowly until 1879 when there was a rush of capital to develop the coal industry, and in consequence the town grew very rapidly. By June, 1880, the population was 930 and the next year had reached 1,700. Scranton was incorporated as a city of the third class on Aug. 4, 1880. The first officers were: Mayor, J. M. Giddings; clerk and police judge, John R. Poe; treasurer, H. A. Sheldon; marshal, W. S. Challis; councilmen, Joseph Tomlinson, William Scott, James Ingram, Joseph Drake and Thomas Kelley.

The first birth and the first death was that of Madison Evans, son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Evans, who was born in Aug., 1872, and died in Dec., 1873. The first marriage was between Davis Williams and Mrs. Rebecca Stull in 1873. The first sermon was preached in the boarding house in 1872 by Rev. J. W. Stogdill. The school house was built in the same year and the first teacher was H. D. Porter.