Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company

The corporate headquarters built in downtown Mauch Chunk across the street from the LC&N's train station on the subsidiary Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad (L&SRR).
Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company Stock Certificate
Stereoscopic photo of a hand-hewn, mile-long, 75-foot-deep cut at the Solomon Gap for the subsidiary Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad. The cut connected the small siding at the top of the Ashley Planes to the conventional railway marshalling yard at Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. Trios of loaded hopper cars rose 1,000 feet (300 m) in about 1 mile (1,600 m) for almost 100 years.
This painting shows the view from North Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, across the several-mile-long pool created by the LC&N's upper lock and dam at Mauch Chunk, showing the first coal chute at the terminus of its Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad. Its primitive company town, now Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, sits in the shelf-land and gap under Mount Pisgah.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company in Pennsylvania that operated from 1822 through 1964.

In its first 50 years, the company spearheaded industrial development in the United States by taking on civil engineering challenges thought impossible and creating important transport infrastructure. It established the Lehigh Canal; built the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad and its many northeastern Pennsylvania shortline railroads, spurs, and subsidiaries; created the Ashley Planes and other novel means of transport; and created transport corridors still important today. It also pioneered the mining of anthracite coal in the United States, acquiring virtually the entire eastern lobe of the Southern Pennsylvania Coal Region.[1]

Formed in 1822 by combining the Lehigh Coal Mining Company (1893) and the Lehigh Navigation Company, it represented the first merger of interlocking companies in the United States.[2] Five years later, the company built the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, the first coal railroad and just the second railroad company in the country after the B&O. It was founded by industrialists Josiah White (1780-1850) and Erskine Hazard (1790-1865),[3] who sought to improve delivery of coal to markets.[4] and a thickly accented German immigrant miner named Hauto.[5]

The company is known in the Lehigh Valley as the "Old Company", as distinct from the later 1988–2010 company: the nearly same named Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company— the 'New Company', to the people of the region.[6]

Development

Map of the Anthracite Upland Section of Pennsylvania.[7]
 • Jim Thorpe/Mauch Chunk is just off the right edge of this map, which shows the rough terrain, severe elevation changes and 9 miles (14.5 km) distance between Lehigh Coal Mining Company's mines at the divide and the county line. All the coal lands in the 14 miles (23 km) from Jim Thorpe to Tamaqua were owned by LC&N, over 8,000 acres (32 km2). Lehighton and Packerton are just downriver from Jim Thorpe, in the Mahoning Hills area.
 • The Panther Creek stream running west below Lansford, Coaldale and summit hill is running downhill to the Little Schuylkill River watershed, at Tamaqua, over the terrain where the Old company built the Panther Creek Railroad from Tamaqua Junction to Lansford and the mines above Nesquehoning. LC&N later built the Hauto Tunnel, shortening the trip to points east some 12 miles, and avoiding delays from the crowded rail nexus at Delano Junction.

In 1792, hunter Philip Ginter discovered coal[8] on Sharpe Mountain—a peak on Pisgah Ridge near the border between Schuylkill and (today's) Carbon Counties. The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded the following year, but management proved weak and it was eventually absorbed by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company.[9]

Lehigh Coal Mine Company

Founded in 1793 with enough money to buy 10,000 acres of lands in and around the Panther Creek Valley, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) had unsuccessfully attempted to transport and reliably market anthracite from the large deposits on Pisgah Mountain near what is now Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia via the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. The fuel was much needed as the East both had increased demand from early industrial seed industries and denuded local woods driving up the price of charcoal and firewood for heating and cooking. Sporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could get to market, but lost many a boat load on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River.

Eventually the owners sold some of its coal to Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill foundry at the Falls of the Schuylkill near Philadelphia; they were in fact delighted with the quality of the goods, and bought the last two (and only two of five) barges surviving the trip down the Lehigh under the LCMC. Unhappy with the unreliable and unpredictable deliveries from the manager's of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, the two innovative entrepreneurs began inquiring after the rights to mine the LCMC's coal and hatched a plan to improve the navigation on the Lehigh as a key step. leased the Lehigh Coal Mine company's properties in 1817 and took over operations.

From Karl Bodmer's 1832 'Travels_in_America'—a view from the as yet unsettled shores of East Mauch Chunk at the coal loading chute and the slack water pool above the Lower Lehigh Canal, fourteen years after the LCC was formally incorporated.

The Lehigh's Coal Companys

One of the LC&N's predecessors was the short-lived (October 21, 1818—April 21, 1820)[10] Lehigh Coal Company formed by the same principals as organized the Navigation Company, Erskine Hazard and Joshua White, who began by negotiating the option in 1815 for leasing the rights held by the Lehigh Coal Mining Company for 20 years, before soliciting investors, or the legislature for improving the navigation.

“ Under the conditions of the lease, it was stipulated that, after a given time for preparation, they should deliver for their own benefit at least forty thousand bushels of coal annually in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts, and should pay, if demanded, one ear of corn as a yearly rental.[11] ”

Lehigh Coal Mining Company

The Lehigh Coal Mining Company (LCMC) had acquired lands and land rights around Summit Hill in 1792, a year after coal was discovered on the mountain. But the company had difficulty getting the coal to the Philadelphia markets because barges, the only bulk cargo carriers available, often foundered on the Lehigh River's many rapids.[12][notes 1]

Lehigh Coal Company

In 1815, inspired by the media coverage about the Erie Canal (begun 1817) and fed up with LCMC's inability to deliver, White and Hazard began negotiating to acquire the operating rights to the company. Upon securing them, they immediately petitioned the legislature and propose acquiring rights to make improvements of the river, for which there was a string of supportive legislation going back decades.

They very shortly found themselves advised repeatedly that both the improvements, and the mining operation at Summit Hill, having each repeatedly failed miserably time after time, were both considered crackpot schemes, usually by differing groups of potential investors; the majority opinion being the improvements were more possible, and the coal mining was less likely to be a success. Accordingly, they secured other investors by forming two companies: The Lehigh Coal Company (LCC) and the Lehigh Navigation Company, and began seeking legislative approval for improving the Lehigh River with a navigation.

“ The desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. The various powers applied for, and granted, embraced the whole range of tried and untried methods for securing "a navigation downward once in three days for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons." The State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the service given by the company did not meet "the wants of the country." ”

The next hurdle surprised White and Hazard—there were in general, as was witnessed by the legislator's comments, a wide divergence of opinion as to whether the Lehigh could be tamed, and perhaps more surprising, there were less backers of any scheme to continue mining coal from the lands held by LCMC—there were simply too many failures over the 24 years of its operations for the peace of mind of many investors. Accordingly, three times the funds were raised to improve the river as were raised to put the mining U delivery of coal onto a regular paying basis.

Given permission, the two companies went to work, and overstocked the market demand in 1820, having opened practical, though not ideal navigability of the Lehigh over four years ahead of their targeted 1824. Coal mining and delivery by grading a near constant descent mule track from Summit Hill to feed a loading chute at the huge slack water pool created at Mauch Chunk, went well as well; the coal deposits were essentially outcrops needing little effort to extract.

Riding this success, the two companies were merged into the Lehigh Navigation Company, resolved to apply the high tech of the Canal Era (canals, locks, rails) to bringing coal to their foundries and the stoves and furnaces of Philadelphia and beyond.

Lehigh Navigation Company

Having displayed great technological skills by creating the world's first iron wire suspension bridge, which spanned the Schuylkill River at their wire works, White and Hazard schemed with other industrialists to secure a reliable source of anthracite. In 1814, they gained a contingency lease of the production rights to Lehigh Coal Companies' mineral wealth from its absentee management and secured other anthracite investors.

To move the coal to market, they entered political negotiations to acquire rights to tame the turbulent and rapids-ridden Lehigh River for navigation. By 1817–18, they had organized the separate Lehigh Navigation Company and had written stock flyers announcing plans to deliver barge loads of coal regularly to Philadelphia by 1824.

The company began to prepare plans and surveyed sites, and when the state legislature approved the river work in 1818, hired men and began to install locks, dams, and weirs, including water management gates of their own novel design.

“ The desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818.[9] ”

Crews were sent up Mount Pisgah to improve the mule trails down from the coal deposits at Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, and others to build docks, boat building facilities, and the canal systems head end pool and locks.

The canal head end needed a location where barges could be built and timber and coal could be brought into slack water. The challenge was to do it above the gap made by the east end of Mount Pisgah, a hard rock knob that towers 700 to 900 feet above the Lehigh River towns Jim Thorpe (formerly Mauch Chunk) to the towns west, and Nesquehoning to its north. Both towns are built into the flanks, the traverses, of the mountain, with flats along the river banks. (A few decades later, railroads would follow the canals.)

Within the next two years, White and Hazard constructed a descending navigation system that used their unique "bear trap" or hydrostatic locks, which allowed the passage of coal boats by means of artificial floods. The coal arrived at the head end from the mines at Summit Hill or down along the steep mule trail from near the headwaters of Panther Creek. It floated down the navigation; at journey's end, the barges were sold as fuel or for Delaware basin transports.

The navigation company began shipping significant quantities of coal by early 1819, ahead of expectations, and attained their goal of regular shipments in 1820.

In 1822, the company was combined with the Lehigh Coal Company.

Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company

The Lehigh Coal & Lehigh Navigation companies merged by late 1821, formally incorporated the following year, and by 1824 were reliably transporting large amounts of coal to White's mills and Philadelphia.

In 1827-28, the Company built America's second railroad, the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, to bring more coal from mines to river. The railroad ran along the south side of Pisgah Ridge from Summit Hill to the canal, ending at Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe). During these same years, it also began converting its descending navigation system into a two-way system. With rights of eminent domain, the Lehigh Navigation was extended upriver through the Lehigh Gorge from Jim Thorpe and completed in 1829, giving it the largest carrying capacity of any U.S. canal. Stretching from Mauch Chunk past Allentown to the Delaware River at Easton, this waterway was connected to New York and Philadelphia by the completion of the Morris and Delaware Canals in 1832 and 1833 respectively.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company used its founder's knowledge and experience on the Little Schuylkill to develop the waterpower sites along its waterways into early industrial parks. By 1840, the Abbott Street area near Lock 47, now part of Easton's Hugh Moore Park, employed over 1,000 men in almost a dozen factories. This fostered the industries of Allentown, Bethlehem, and greater Philadelphia.

Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad

With a unified legislative and executive push, LC&N spun off a subsidiary to build a railroad connection to the Susquehanna at Pittston just north of Wilkes-Barre over very rough terrain. The multi-modal project used a cable railroad called the Ashley Planes, and double-tracked connecting trackage from its foot at Ashley to the barge docks of Pittston and eventually linked up with the seven first-class railroads that drove spurs into the valley to haul anthracite. The Ashley Planes summit end connected to an assembly yard at Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, and sourced a steep double-tracked rail branch to White Haven where it had loading docks with a meeting of transport technologies feeding an new extension of its Lehigh Canal through the difficult terrain of the Lehigh Gorge. With the political push to connect Philadelphia and the Delaware to the Northern Coal Fields in the Wyoming Valley and to the Susquehanna River, LC&N formed the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad empowered with rights of eminent domain. Eventually, both the LC&N Company's Lehigh Navigation and the L&SRR were extended upriver through the Lehigh Gorge from Jim Thorpe to White Haven.

Other LC&N railroads

By the later 1820s through the mid-1830s, the civic and business leaders of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey were anxious to connect their young factories with the markets of the trans-Appalachian territories being settled by tens of thousands of westward migrants. To compete with the B&O Railroad and Erie Canal, they launched the Main Line of Public Works to benefit the manufacturers of the Delaware region.

The LC&N built a succession of small but influential shortline railways as joint ventures with other investors, each of which concurrently solved an earlier irrealizable and intractable civil construction project. Ownership and operations of all these, as well as their initial railway, the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, were ultimately combined under the umbrella of their second, the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (Today, this is a holding company that owns and leases the trackage rights to more visible operating road companies for many important rail corridors in northeast Pennsylvania.)

Subsidiary shortlines

Lehigh and New England Railroad

The acquisition of the Lehigh and New England[13] allowed the LC&N to stop leasing rights to the CNJ and transfer them instead to the new acquisition.

Surviving 143 years

By the middle of the 20th century, coal demand softened, thanks to the replacement of steam locomotive with diesels and the growth of other forms of heating. Expenses for upkeep outstripped declining canal revenue, forcing the Lehigh Navigation to close in 1932. A large portion of the once-widely diversified LC&N depended upon coal, while subsidiaries owned the railroads and other profitable arms. Consequently, various boards oversaw gradual contraction of the company and sales of bits and pieces. In 1966, Greenwood Stripping Co. bought the remaining coal properties, most located as originally exploited along the Panther Creek Valley, and sold them eight years later to Bethlehem Mines Corp

Shareholders dissolved the company in 1986, after it sold its last business, Cella's Chocolate Covered Cherries, to Tootsie Roll.[13]

The new company

The company name remained associated with anthracite mining through the independently founded and otherwise unrelated Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, incorporated in 1988. While unrelated legally, the 'New Company' as it's known in the area was spearheaded by a previous officer and stockholder: James J. Curran Jr. took over Lehigh Coal from Bethlehem Mines Corp. in 1989, and through the 1990s it remained the largest producer of U.S. anthracite, which is now a specialty product. In 2000, Lehigh Coal shut down and laid-off 163 employees, saying plunging coal prices made it impossible to make a profit. The company reopened in 2001 with help of a last-resort $9 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2010, in bankruptcy proceedings once again,[14] the company was purchased by one of its bigger creditors[14] at auction, BET Associates, who were affiliated with Toll Brothers.[14] The company properties in between Lansford and Nesquehoning, boasting an EPA permit sign in the same Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company name at the company gates along Rt-209 were observed in operation during mid-July 2013.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ According to TBrecalled's History of Carbon County, the last LCMC operation, launched in the shortages worsened by the War of 1812, built five boats and filled them, spending over a year overall. Three of the five sank before reaching safe waters, and the two remnants were purchased by White and Hazard.

 

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ FRANK WHELAN (1986-06-08). "Ex-executive Recalls Decline And Fall Of Lehigh Coal And Navigation Co.". The Morning Call, June 08, 1986. Lehigh Coal and Navigation controlled 8,000 acres of coal lands running from Jim Thorpe to Tamaqua, 14 miles away. This comprised the entire eastern end of the southern anthracite field.
  2. ↑ Archer B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce, A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Vol. 21, The Chronicles of America Series. Editor: Allen Johnson (1921)
  3. ↑ National Canal Museum – The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company Accessed 2008-09-18.
  4. ↑ http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!140147!0&term=#focus
  5. ↑ Hurlbert, Chapter III, quote: Believing that coal could be obtained more cheaply from Mauch Chunk than from the mines along the Schuylkill, White, Hauto, and Hazard formed a company, entered into negotiation with the owners of the Lehigh mines, and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of twenty years at an annual rental of one ear of corn.
  6. ↑ Per paid guide presentation in July 2013 at the Lansford-Coaldale 'Number Nine Museum' in the Panther Creek Valley.
  7. ↑ Sevon, W. D., compiler, 2000, "Physiographic provinces of Pennsylvania", Pennsylvania Geological Survey of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 4th ser., Map 13, scale 1:2,000,000.
  8. ↑ The Early Days of Summit Hill, updated September 24th, 2009, www.summithill.com, LeeMantz@summit-hill.com, (accessed: 9 September 2013)
  9. 1 2 Hurlbert, June, 1919, CHAPTER III. The Mastery Of The Rivers
  10. ↑ Ancestry.com, p593: "We will remark here that the Lehigh Coal Company was incorporated by act of Oct. 21, 1818; that its leading characters were the same as those of the Navigation, White, Hazard, and Hauto; that the last named was bought out by his partners in March, 1820, and that on April 21, 1820, the two companies were consolidated under the title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company."
  11. ↑ Brenkman, p77
  12. ↑ The task which Josiah White and Erskine Hazard undertook, that of making the Lehigh a navigable stream, was one which had before been several times attempted, and as often abandoned as too expensive and difficult to be successfully carried out. The Legislature was early aware of the importance of the navigation of this stream, and in 1771 passed a law for its improvement. Subsequent laws for the same object were enacted in 1791, 1794, 1798, 1810, 1814, and 1816, and a company had been formed under one of them which expended upwards of thirty thousand dollars in clearing out channels, one of which they attempted to make through the ledges of slate about seven miles above Allentown, though they soon relinquished the work.
  13. 1 2 http://articles.mcall.com/1986-06-08/news/2521866_1_parton-coal-industry-lehigh-coal
  14. 1 2 3 LC&N sold at auction

External links

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