DELAWARE AND HUDSON COMPANY, THE, a holding company, formerly the oldest operating railway company in America, and a large anthracite carrier, founded by William and Maurice Wurts, Philadelphia merchants, who discovered and ac quired anthracite lands in the Lackawanna valley, Pennsylvania, for replacing English coal cut off by the War of 1812. It was chartered in New York, on April 23, 1823, as "The President, Managers and Company of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company," which built a canal, Rondout, New York, to Hones dale, Pennsylvania, in 1828, aided by a loan of credit of the State of New York in the amount of $800,000, and a railroad, Hones dale to the coal beds at Carbondale, Pennsylvania, on which the "Stourbridge Lion," the first locomotive to run on an American railroad, made its famous trial trip on August 8, 1829. The name was changed by act of the New York legislature, passed on April 28, 1899. The canal was abandoned and its cost charged off in 1898. Coal ownership was greatly enhanced by acquisition and lease, after the Civil War, of additional coal properties, at a later time transferred to a wholly-owned subsidiary. By obtaining control of numerous railroads and some construction, the company built up a railway system extending from Plymouth, Pennsylvania, by way of Albany and Schenectady to Rouses Point, New York, at the Canadian border, with branches to Binghamton, Troy, Lake George, Lake Placid, New York, and Rutland, Vermont, and other points, a total of 865.18 miles, all of which, consisting of 303.69 owned, 456.09 leased and controlled, and 105.4o trackage rights, together with two controlled railroad corporations, operating 11.63 miles in New York, were transferred on April 1, 1930, to "The Delaware and Hudson Railroad Corporation," a wholly owned subsidiary, chartered December 1, 1928, in New York. The company owns a railroad in Canada, operating 27.15 miles, and controls iron ore mines at Lyon Mountain, New York, and summer hotels at Lake George and Bluff Point, New York, all of which are independently operated. (L. F. L.)