Early history '' featuring an illustration of
anthracite coal loading at the loading chutes in
Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania;
Hauto Tunnel was in operation, and the LC&N Co. allowed its subsidiary Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad to be sold as a tourist railroad. As the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, it was the world's first
roller coaster. in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the mid-20th century The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded in 1792, a few months after
anthracite was discovered at
Sharp Mountain, a peak of the
Pisgah Ridge near present-day
Summit Hill, Pennsylvania; Its principals secured rights to over before the Lehigh Canal was built. The company found it fairly easy to find and mine coal from a pit on the mountainside. The coal had to be loaded into sacks and then onto
pack animals, which carried the coal at least to the Lehigh shore. Disposable skiffs known as
arks were built from local timber, which were manned along the lower
Lehigh River rapids. Despite many politically connected stockholders and officers, the operation was unsupervised by upper management. With no officer willing to manage from the field, the LCMC hired contractors or sent out teams, which was only sporadically successful in getting coal to
Philadelphia.
Background The lower canal began as a collection of removed stone obstructions and low rock dams with a system of wooden "bear-trap locks" invented by Lehigh Navigation and Coal Company managing partner Josiah White, who debugged scale models of the lock design on
Mauch Chunk Creek. Experiments with the bear-trap locks gave Bear Lane, an alley in Mauch Chunk off Broadway in today's
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, its name. White and partner Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill, foundry and nail factory at the Falls of the Schuylkill, needed energy. After learning the value of anthracite during the
British blockades in 1814, White and Hazard joined a number of Philadelphians in a
joint-stock venture to build the
Schuylkill Canal but quarreled with those on the board of managers who did not favor rapid development. They learned that the managers of the
Lehigh Coal Mine Company were willing to option their rights because of their long-term inability to make a profit by transporting anthracite nearly from
Pisgah Ridge. The Lehigh Navigation Company held a charter to improve the navigability of the
Lehigh River, but had accomplished little and the charter would expire in 1817. White and Hazard made a proposal specifying improvements for downriver navigation only, and received a charter giving the company ownership of the river in March 1818. The charter had a fall-back provision allowing the legislature to require improvements enabling two-way navigation. By mid-1822, managing director Josiah White was consulting with veteran Erie-Canal lock engineer
Canvass White. By late in the year, White had shifted construction efforts from improving the one-way system (begun in 1818) to a test project on the four upper dams of the canal. The project involved two-way dams and locks with a wider lift channel and lengths of over , capable of taking a steam tug and a coastal cargo ship from from the Delaware to the slack-water pool at Mauch Chunk. In 1823, White and Hazard proposed a plan to the Pennsylvania legislature.
Further construction In 1823, after building and testing four locks, Josiah White made a proposal to the Pennsylvania legislature to continue the improvements down the Lehigh River. His plan included locks suitable for a coastal schooner and towing steam tug, the types of boats which dominated ports along the of the
Delaware River controlled by the LC&N. The eastern section (now preserved as a recreational-boating area) runs along the Lehigh River from Hopeville to the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers in Easton and includes the
Chain Bridge, which was NRHP-listed in 1974. The eastern-section listing is for a area with three contributing buildings, seven contributing sites and 11 contributing structures. The Allentown-to-Hopeville section is a area which includes
Greek Revival and
Federal architecture in its contributing building and 13 contributing structures. ==Present activities==