The Steamtown Marathon Turns Scranton's Streets Into a Finish Line
Each October since 1996, the Steamtown Marathon has run 26.2 miles from Forest City into downtown Scranton — a fast course, a valley tour, and a local institution.
Scranton's biggest annual sporting event runs through it. The Steamtown Marathon, held each October since 1996, covers the standard 26.2 miles from its start in Forest City, down through the Lackawanna Valley's boroughs and rail-trail country, to a finish in downtown Scranton — a net-downhill course that has made it a favorite of runners chasing Boston Marathon qualifying times.
The route is a geography lesson at running pace: Carbondale, Jermyn, Archbald, Blakely, Dickson City and the valley's river and trail corridor, before the final miles on Scranton's streets, where crowds gather at the finish in the center of the city the race is named for. For the boroughs along the way, marathon morning is a block party with cowbells; for runners, the valley's small towns provide the kind of continuous support big-city races cannot.
The marathon also closes the region's outdoor sports calendar with a civic signature. It draws thousands of visiting runners and their families into Lackawanna County for a weekend, fills the downtown hotels and restaurants, and recruits an army of local volunteers — the same organizational muscle the city shows for its St. Patrick's Day parade, the nation's fourth-largest by attendance.
With this year's race in the books, the cycle resets the way it does for the RailRiders and the ski lifts at Montage Mountain: registrations and training plans for next October begin in the dark months, and by spring the long runs are back on the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail.
A marathon is the rare sporting event a whole valley can host inside its own borders, and Scranton has made it a signature — proof that the Electric City's best stadium is sometimes its own map.
