Minooka is a town excellently located for a residential
district. It is about nine hundred feet above sea level and ten minutes drive
from the center of the City of Scranton.
The inhabitants of Minooka are not troubled with smoke,
ashes, dust, or the noise of railroad trains, or nauseous vapors which are so
detrimental to many of the residential sections of the County of Lackawanna.
While we have the conveniences of and easy access to three
steam railroads, yet the town is so located that we have none of the noises and
smoke incident to their operation. In addition, we have the convenience of a
ten-minute street railway service.
Like many other mining communities and as was the custom in
the early history of mining, it adopted the name of its earliest mine operators
and was known successively as Needham’s Patch, Davis’ Patch, Coary Hollow and
Glen Newman, and finally Minooka.
How Minooka Got Its
Name
An English captain named Carr owned and operated a mine in
the vicinity of what is now the National Colliery of the Glen Alden Coal
Company, and all of that section of the 20th Ward, adjoining Minooka
was originally known as Carr’s Patch. He had a niece who was very fond of an
Indian maiden with the quaint name of Minooka, and she prevailed upon Captain
Carr and the early settlers to call the community after her friend, the Indian
maiden, hence the name Minooka.
The first dwelling built in Minooka was located upon Birney
Avenue on the land now owned and occupied by Patrick Higgins, grocer. It was a
large wooden structure and did not have a single nail in its entire
construction. Wooden pegs being used throughout.
Many of the present residents remember the building but the
name of the person or persons who owned and built it is always the subject of
debate. As the story goes, it was built as a center for a group of peddlers (or
merchants of the road) and used by them for many years. The first authentic
owner was Joseph Nulkie, recently of Taylor.
The first Tavern stood upon the plot on Birney Avenue now
owned by Jeremiah McCarthy, and was conducted by James Whitley and known as
Whitley’s Red Tavern.
