City Journal
Charles F. McElwee
Spring 2018
As you depart Manhattan on the George Washington Bridge, a brief interval on I-95 takes you to Exit 69 for I-80, the access point to New Jersey’s third-largest city, Paterson, and ultimately to the Delaware Water Gap, a geologically arresting gateway to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Following Pennsylvania’s toll bridge, you’ll pass billboards for resorts, outlet stores, and chain restaurants along a highway lined by hemlocks, mountain laurel, and birch trees. Westward, all road signs direct drivers toward Hazleton, a small city located near the crossroads of I-80 and I-81, one of the East Coast’s busiest intersections for truck traffic.
Centrally situated in northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region, Hazleton (population 25,000) sits on a plateau named Spring Mountain and boasts of being the most elevated incorporated city in the state. To first-time visitors or passing drivers, Hazleton presents itself as a compact vista of hilly blocks, packed with duplex homes, bungalows, and ornate church steeples, designating allegiance to the Latin or Eastern Rite. Its surroundings make a dramatic contrast of picturesque agricultural valleys, dense forests, and landscapes scarred by coal operations.
With a population long dominated by the descendants of European immigrants, Hazleton has been radically transformed since the early 2000s by secondary chain migration, principally driven by Dominicans—immigrants, both legal and illegal, as well as second- and third-generation citizens arriving from the New York metropolitan area. In 2000, Hispanics made up less than 5 percent of Hazleton’s population; they now account for more than 50 percent. Such rapid and dramatic demographic shifts are rare in U.S. cities. For Hazleton, the consequences have been profound, and the city is struggling to cope.
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