Carbondale

City in Jackson County, south-central Illinois, USA, at the northern edge of the Illinois Ozarks, 53 km/33 mi northeast of Cape Girardeau, Missouri; population (2000) 20,700. Named after local coalfields, it has been a mining and rail centre since the Illinois Central Railroad founded the city in 1852 and established division headquarters here. In addition to trading local produce and repairing trains, it also manufactures clothes, dairy foods, concrete, treated wood, and plastic tape.

Southern Illinois University (1869) is here. The Shawnee National Forest lies to the southwest, and the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge is on 14 km/9 mi-long Crab Orchard Lake, 5 km/3 mi to the east.

Carbondale

City in Lackawanna County, northeastern Pennsylvania, USA, on the Lackawanna River, 26 km/16 mi northeast of Scranton; population (1990) 10,700. Named after the extensive open-pit coal mining activities in the area, Carbondale is a coal mining centre and also manufactures metal products, chemicals, textiles, and other goods.

The local coal deposits led to the building of the Delaware and Hudson Canal (1825), and of a gravity railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale (1829). It was also the site of the world's first underground anthracite mine (1831).