By the 1790s, industrializing eastern population centers were having increasing troubles getting charcoal to fuel their growing kilns, smithies, and foundries.

During a fuel shortage in Philadelphia during the War of 1812, an employee at the direction of industrialist Josiah White conducted a series of experiments and discovered a number of ways that anthracite coal could be successfully ignited and burned.

The news of its rapid repair and restoration together with the fact anthracite stocks had for a time run down, but not out, establishing the reliable sourcing[a] finished off the bias,[4] as did the beginning of mine output reaching the Delaware basin markets due to the long delayed completion of the Schuylkill Canal.

In the early 1820s, Philadelphia merchant William Wurts, who enjoyed walking about along Amerindian paths, and what today what is termed taking nature hikes, had heard of possible anthracite in the area,[5] so took a trip to explore the sparsely settled regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Returning to Philadelphia, he successfully interested his brothers in backing the idea of building a canal to make easier transporting coal to New York City.

[6] The city was still feeling the effects of the depletion of stands of woodlands providing heating and cooking firewood and also squeezed by continuing post-War of 1812 import restrictions on British bituminous coal, on which it had once been relying.

[8] The D&H was chartered by separate laws in the states of New York and Pennsylvania in 1823 and 1826, respectively, allowing William Wurts and his brother Maurice to construct the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the gravity railroad that served it.

In January 1825, following a demonstration of anthracite heating in a Wall Street coffeehouse, the D&H's public stock offering raised a million dollars.

The canal was a successful enterprise for many of its early years, but the company's management realized that railroads were the future of transportation, and began investing in stock and trackage.

The Delaware and Hudson already had a history of working with the Albany and Susquehanna, agreeing in 1866 to jointly build an extension to Nineveh and subsequently ship coal across the entire line.

On March 1, 1871, the D&H leased the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad Company, which, along with its leased lines, provided a network stretching north from Albany and Schenectady to Saratoga Springs, and continuing northeast to Rutland, Vermont, as well as an eastern route to Rutland via trackage rights over the Troy and Boston Railroad west of Eagle Bridge.

The D&H obtained trackage rights over the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad in 1886, extending the main line southwest from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre.

On July 11, 1889, the D&H bought the Adirondack Railway, a long branch line heading north from Saratoga Springs along the Hudson River.

Upon gaining control of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad Company in 1871, new repair shops were built north of Albany, New York at Green Island.

A direct line to Albany existed for many years through the canal and river system, so most of the coal markets in the area were already accessible.

These concerns were overruled by the majority, who believed great benefit would accrue to having an all-rail route to Upstate New York that was not nearly as vulnerable to winter weather as the canal.

The effort was helped by a report that estimated necessary upgrades to the canal would cost $300,000, an expenditure that would not be needed if rail routes could be purchased or leased.

On April 28, 1899, the name was changed to the Delaware and Hudson Company to reflect the lack of a canal, which was sold in June of that year.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approved their purchase, under the condition that they take over the D&H and the Erie Lackawanna Railway (EL).

After several merger plans fell through, EL petitioned for and became included in the formation of the federal government's nascent Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail).

The remainder of the Penn Division from Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, to Nineveh, New York, was abandoned after the Belden Hill tunnel was enlarged in 1986.

In 1984, Guilford Transportation Industries purchased the D&H as part of a plan to operate a larger regional railroad from Maine and New Brunswick in the east, to New York City and the Midwest in the west, Montreal in the north, and the Philadelphia and Washington metropolitan areas to the south.

Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, officials purchased the Carbondale-Scranton route, and it later began to serve a growing number of industries in the valley under the auspices of the designated operator, Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad.

[22] In 1991, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) purchased the D&H for $25 million to provide a connection between Montreal and the New York City area, for their transcontinental system.

CPR quickly placed the D&H and other unprofitable trackage in the eastern U.S. and Canada into a separate subsidiary called the St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway.

CPR has been steadily using its high-power alternating current traction locomotives on its road trains on the D&H line, instead of its aging SD40-2 models.

The majority of the current traffic on the offered routes already consisted of NS Intermodal Containers and Auto Rack trains bound for Ayer, Massachusetts, via Pan Am Southern.

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, D&H President L.F. Loree ordered many of the railway's larger locomotives to be taken off the main line and serviced with the sole reasoning being to keep men working so they did not lose their jobs.

[citation needed] The branch of the D&H that ran between Lake Village and Glens Falls, New York, was converted to the Warren County bikeway in several phases, starting in 1978 and finishing in 2000.

rebuilt from class G-1c (653 jointly built by ALCo and D&H) 651 Dabeg, 652 Walschaerts, 653 poppet valve 857, 864, 865, 868, 873, 876, 879, 880, 895, 898, 900 B. Jarvis), 1402 (James Archbald) used marine-type boilers with water-tube fireboxes four-cylinder triple expansion engine called "Laurentians" by D&H