Wyoming Valley

Region running 32 km/20 mi from northeast–southwest along the Susquehanna River in Luzerne County, northeast Pennsylvania. It became in the 1760s the crux of a dispute between the Connecticut-based Susquehanna Company and Pennsylvanians. Following the first Pennamite War (1769–71), the Connecticut group established the township of Westmoreland (1774). In 1778, during the American Revolution, Tories and American Indians massacred a number of settlers. In 1782 the Continental Congress ruled for Pennsylvania in the dispute, but Connecticut pioneers refused to leave, leading to the second Pennamite War(1784). Final resolution did not occur until 1799.

The Algonquian name, meaning ‘big flats’, was adopted in 1868 for the territory that became the state of Wyoming.