Lehigh Canal

Lehigh Canal

The Lehigh Canal as seen from Guard Lock 8 & Lockhouse, Island Park Road, Glendon, Northampton County, PA

Lower division of the Lehigh Canal, from Jim Thorpe, PA to Easton, PA
Location Lehigh River
Upper: Nesquehoning, PA to White Haven, PA
Lower: Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) to
Delaware River at Easton, PA
Coordinates 40°46′09″N 75°36′13″W / 40.76917°N 75.60361°W / 40.76917; -75.60361Coordinates: 40°46′09″N 75°36′13″W / 40.76917°N 75.60361°W / 40.76917; -75.60361
Built 1818-1821; 24-27
upper: 1838-1843,
Upper ruined & abandoned: 1862
Architect Canvass White, Josiah White
Architectural style Fitted stone, iron and wood
NRHP Reference # 78002437, 78002439, 79002179, 79002307, 80003553[1]
Added to NRHP Earliest October 2, 1978

The Lehigh Canal was a 'navigation', the type of canal built along the line of a river and parallel to the of the fall of the watercourse, constructed 20 years apart that stretched over two parts of the Lehigh River and totaling 72-mile (116 km) along the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania.

The Lower Canal

The lower canal (46.5 miles (74.8 km)) was built by the Lehigh Navigation Company as a coal road to service the Anthracite appetite of Eastern seaboard cities ahead of schedule, between 1818-1820 (down traffic only), and then gradually rebuilt (with locks fully supporting two way traffic) 1824-1827 by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and continued in operation as a key transportation canal until the 1931. The lower canal connected the Southern Coal Region to the Delaware River basin, connecting Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe, PA) to Easton, PA using a specially designed canal boat capable of making the one-way trip on the River as well.[n 1] It was used to carry anthracite gathered to the central Lehigh Valley to the urban markets of the northeast, especially Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Trenton, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware, but supported new growth industries in Bristol, PA, Allentown and Bethlehem. The privately funded canal was joined as part of the Pennsylvania Canal System, a complex system of canals and tow paths—and eventually railroads. The canal was sold for recreation use in the 1960s. Today, many parts of the canal or railroads later constructed to flank it, have been converted to the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (known colloquially as the 'D & L Trail'), a multi-use rail trail.

History

The Lehigh Coal Mine Company

The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded in 1792, a few months after Anthracite coal was discovered at Sharpe Mountain, a peak of the Pisgah Ridge near to the location that became Summit Hill, PA, and its principals would secure rights to over 10,000 acres before the Lehigh Canal was created. Where that enterprise found it fairly easy to find and mine coal, which occurred in outcrops and vertically aligned shafts near the original find, the mine output needed laboriously loaded onto pack animals which had to carry the coal nine miles to the Lehigh shores. There, the company had to build skiffs using local stands of timber, which then needed manned by stout hearts which had to brave and survive running the various Rapids along the lower Lehigh River. Having no company officer willing to manage from the field, the LCMC hired contractors, or sent out teams over the years which had only sporadic success in getting a boat filled with coal to the markets of Philadelphia. Yet the Eastern cities were undergoing a deforestation caused energy crisis—fire wood for heating buildings, and charcoal for working or making iron was becoming dear to purchase and hard to find by the time of the War of 1812. Prior to the war, so dismal was the LCMC company's record of getting coal to market, that coal imported from England was cheaper to find and more reliable to repurchase. The war gave a small boost to the company's aspirations, and the LCMC sent an expedition which after a year, returned in 1814 after building five boats but able to bring only two to market. They were both bought by the same party, and it was the last straw for many of the companies backers.


Initial construction

With the discovery of large deposits of anthracite coal, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was formed to transport the coal down the Lehigh River to the Delaware River and on to the growing consumer markets in Philadelphia via a connection with the Pennsylvania Canal (Delaware Division) in Easton.

The upper Lehigh Canal was designed by Canvass White, an engineer of New York's Erie Canal, was constructed between 1818 and 1829. The enlarged Lehigh Navigation extended 46 miles (74 km) between Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania (present-day Jim Thorpe) and Easton with 52 locks, eight guard locks, eight dams and six aqueducts, allowing the waterway to overcome a difference in elevation of over 350 feet (107 m). A weigh lock determined canal boat fees a half mile (1 km) south of Mauch Chunk. A connection across the Delaware River to the Morris Canal through New Jersey allowed the coal from the Lehigh Canal to be shipped more directly to New York City.

Expansion

The upper Lehigh Canal was designed by Canvass White, an engineer of New York's Erie Canal, and was constructed between 1837 and 1843, as authorized by the 1837 revision of the Main Line of Public Works. The upper Lehigh was a twisty rapids strewn watercourse with steep sides, a large part of which was located in a ravine, the Lehigh Gorge. The village of White Haven, PA is at the upper end of the navigation, and inspired by the Allegheny Portage Railroad the legislature sought to more effectively connect the vast coal deposits of the Wyoming Valley to the Delaware basin cities, noted above. The project included three major railroad projects, which LC&N created a new subsidiary, the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S) to implement; north to south these were the Rail connection from the Pennsylvania Canal landing docks at Pittston, PA to an assembly railyard at Ashley, PA; the Ashley Planes incline plane railway to Penobscot Knob and Mountain Top, PA, and lastly, a marshaling yard at Mountain Top with a rail road running down a ribs of a ridgeline down to White Haven and the new upper canal docks. During the 1830s, an extension of 26 miles (42 km) to White Haven, Pennsylvania, which included 20 dams and 29 locks, was constructed, covering a difference in elevation of over 600 feet (183 m) to Mauch Chunk. In 1855, as alternative sources opened to steal market share, the canal reached its peak of more than one million tons of cargo. After that, coal mined in the Schuylkill Valley supplanted coal supplied by the Lehigh Canal.

Demise

The demise of the canal began with competition from railroads and the catastrophic flood of June 4, 1862. The canal was used as a means of transportation until the 1940s (about a decade after other similar canals ceased operations), making it the last fully functioning towpath canal in North America. In 1962, most of it was sold to private and public organizations for recreational use.

Recent history

Several segments of the canal were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, under listing names "Lehigh Canal", "Carbon County Section of the Lehigh Canal" (#79002179), "Lehigh Canal: Eastern Section Glendon and Abbott Street Industrial Sites" (#78002437), "Lehigh Canal; Allentown to Hopeville Section" (#79002307) and others. For the Carbon County section, also known as "Upper Canal Lock #1 to Lower Canal Dam #3", the listing included 30 contributing structures.[2]

The Eastern section runs along the Lehigh River from Hopeville to the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers in Easton, Pennsylvania and includes the Chain Bridge, which was separately NRHP-listed in 1974. The Eastern section listing is for a 260-acre (110 ha) area with three contributing buildings, seven contributing sites, and 11 contributing structures.[2]

The Allentown to Hopeville section is a 53.9-acre (21.8 ha) area that includes Greek Revival and vernacular Federal architecture among its one contributing building and 13 contributing structures.[2]

Activities

An 8-mile (13 km) segment of the canal towpath has been converted into a multi-use trail that runs from Freemansburg through Bethlehem to Allentown. The trail runs along the river and active railroad tracks. A section near Jim Thorpe is accessible to recreational users. The final section in Easton is maintained and operated by the National Canal Museum. Other short sections are accessible, but there are parts of the canal towpath that have been worn by the elements and are not safe to access.[3]

Notes

  1. ↑ The delay in completing the Delaware Canal is listed as an extra expense in the annual reports of LC&N.

Pictures

See also

References

  1. ↑ Staff (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 3 Staff (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  3. ↑ "Lehigh Canal". National Canal Museum. Retrieved November 23, 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lehigh Canal.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.