Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company

The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded in 1792[2] and incorporated in 1793 with enough money to acquire 10,000 acres (4,000 ha)[2] in and around the Panther Creek Valley and along Pisgah Mountain,[2] and the aim of hauling anthracite coal from the large deposits on Pisgah Mountain near what is now Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia via mule train to arks built near Lausanne[lower-alpha 7] on the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. The mining camps were over nine miles from the Lehigh River at Mauch Chunk. Sporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could mine to fuel-hungry markets but lost many a boatload on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River, contributing to lost operating profits for the company and sometimes outright losses.[11][lower-alpha 8]

Eventually, the owners sold some coal to Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill foundry at the Schuylkill River falls near Philadelphia.[12] White and Hazard were delighted by the quality of the fuel, and subsequently bought the LCMC's final two barges to survive the trip down the Lehigh. Convinced they could much improve the reliability of its delivery, they began in 1815 to inquire after the rights to mine the LCMC's coal and hatched a plan to improve the navigation on the Lehigh as a key step.[13]

White and Hazard very shortly found themselves on the receiving end of investor criticisms that the improvements and mining operation at Summit Hill were failing and were both considered crackpot schemes. The majority opinion was that improvements were possible, but that coal mining was less likely to succeed. They secured additional 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's 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."

— Brenckman, History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania (1884)

In 1817, they leased the Lehigh Coal Mine's properties and took over operations, incorporating it on October 21, 1818, as the Lehigh Coal Company. They petitioned the legislature and proposed acquiring rights to make improvements to the Lehigh River for which there had been a string of supportive legislation going back decades. In 1820, White and Hazard bought out their partner Hauto and dissolved the Lehigh Coal Company on April 21, 1820.[14]

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.

— Brenckman, History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania (1884)[15]

White and Hazard found a wide divergence of opinion on whether the Lehigh River could be tamed, and even fewer believed that the mining of coal from the Lehigh River's surrounding lands was feasible. On three separate occasions, funds were raised to improve the Lehigh River's functionality. By 1820, the two companies had a marginal level of navigability on the Lehigh over four years ahead of their targeted 1824 deadline. Coal was transported by mule track from Summit Hill to a loading chute at the huge slack water pool at Mauch Chunk.

Riding this success, the two companies were merged into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which resolved to apply American Canal era technology, including canals, locks, and rails to bring coal to their foundries and the stoves and furnaces of Philadelphia and beyond.

On March 20, 1818, the company was granted various powers they sought to secure navigation in the Lehigh River, including with boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons on coal. Pennsylvania's state government kept an eye on the operation, however, and a minority felt the two men might succeed. The state reserved the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the company did not succeed satisfactorily.

Capital was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a committee of stockholders go over the Lehigh River ground and pass judgment on the probable success of the effort. The report was favorable so far as the improvement of the Lehigh River was concerned. But the nine-mile road from the river to the mines was unanimously voted impracticable. "To give you an idea of the country over which the road is to pass," wrote one of the commissioners, "I need only tell you that I considered it quite an easement when the wheel of my carriage struck a stump instead of a stone." The public, meanwhile, was divided. Some held that the attempt to operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and would prove profitable to investors. Others were just as positive that improvement's to the river's navigation would follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines.

The direct result of the examiners' report and of the public debate ultimately was the organization of the first interlocking companies in American commercial history. The Lehigh Navigation Company was formed with a capital stock of $150,000 and the Lehigh Coal Company was launched with capital stock of $55,000. This formed one of the most striking illustrations in American history of the dependence of a commercial venture upon methods of inland transportation. The Lehigh Navigation Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh Coal Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the principle, which was later adopted by the railway, of dividing the total distance by the total descent in order to determine the grade. The Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of sluice gates connecting with pools that could be filled with reserve water to be drawn upon as needed for navigation.

By 1819, the depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton was obtained. The two companies were immediately amalgamated under the title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. By 1823, the two companies delivered over two thousand tons of coal to market.

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.

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.[lower-alpha 9] The LCMC had trouble delivering Anthracite to Philadelphia at costs cheaper than imported Bituminous Coal from Britain or Virginia. Their last expedition had been sent out in 1813 during the war & blockade caused bituminous shortages, and by the time five arks were sent down river, three sank, leaving the directors of LCMC disgusted and unwilling to fund more losses.[2]

The company began to prepare plans and surveyed sites, and when the state legislature approved the river work in 1818, immediately hired teams of men and began to install locks, dams, and weirs, including water management gates of their own novel design.[16]

The desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818.[10]

A brief history of the navigations beginnings as Brenckman related in 1884:

The improvement of the Lehigh was begun at the mouth of the Nesquehoning Creek, during the summer of the year 1818, under the personal supervision of Josiah White. The plan adopted was to contract the channel of the river in the form of a funnel, wherever it was found necessary to raise the water, throwing up the round river-stones into low walls or wing dams, thus providing a regular descending navigation. But it soon became apparent that the carrying out of this plan would not insure sufficient water in seasons of drought to float a loaded ark or boat, and the success of the whole enterprise hung in the balance. In this contingency, Josiah White, who was a man of great resourcefulness and mechanical ingenuity, resorted to the expedient of creating artificial freshets. Dams were constructed in the neighborhood of Mauch Chunk, in which were placed sluice-gates of peculiar design, invented for the purpose by White, and by means of which water could be retained until required for use. When the dam became full and the water had run over it long enough for the river below to regain its ordinary depth, the sluice-gates were let down, while the boats, which were lying in the pool above, passed down with the artificial flood. In this manner the difficulty was overcome. 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.

— Fred Brenckman, The History of Carbon County Pennsylvania

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 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.[17]

In 1820, the company was combined with the Lehigh Coal Company with the ouster of George Hauto, but was not rechartered officially until 1822.

By late 1820, four years ahead of their prospectus's targeted schedule, the unfinished but much improved Lehigh Valley watercourse began reliably transporting large amounts of coal to White's mills and Philadelphia. The nearly 370 tons of coal brought to market that year not only salved the winter's fuel shortage but created a temporary glut. After buying out co-founder George Hauto, White and Hazard reworked their lease deal with the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and merged it with the Lehigh Coal Company, acquiring ownership of its 10,000 acres spanning three parallel valleys in the 14 miles (23 km) from Mauch Chunk to Tamaqua. A few months later, they merged the LCC and the Lehigh Navigation Company. In late 1821, they filed papers to incorporate Lehigh Coal & Lehigh Navigation, which took effect in 1822.

From that moment on, anthracite and the canals were of pivotal importance in the industrial development of the United States. Using anthracite as fuel in its production, iron for the first time became plentiful and inexpensive. For a period of thirty years, three decades that shaped the future of the valley, anthracite fueled furnaces throughout the Lehigh Valley produced greater quantities of iron than any other part of the nation.

— Ann Bartholomew & Lance E. Metz, page 5, DELAWARE and LEHIGH CANALS[3]

The June 6, 1862 flood proved to show a fatal flaw in White's grand dream. The Upper Grand contributed to its own demise in that the dams and locks necessary to allow the coal barges to travel on the river meant that huge pools of water sat at the ready. Once the heavy June rains began, and dams began to be breached, devastating tidal waves of flood water burst dam after dam causing a great flood and loss of life.

John J. Leisenring Jr., then Superintendent of the LCN & Co. estimated that 200 people lost their lives from White Haven down to Lehighton. The state legislature stepped in and prohibited the LCN & Co. from rebuilding.[3]

Primary reference

Heydinger, Earl J. (1964). "Railroads of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company: GROUP IX". Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. 110 (110): 59–62. JSTOR 43518101.[19]

In 1827, the Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the 9.2 miles (14.8 km) of America's second railroad using the road bed of the wagon road built in 1818–19 in just a few months[2] — a gravity railroad named the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad using wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate (as did most more modern railways) — to bring coal from mines to river more efficiently.[20] The work went quickly since the right-of-way surveyed by White (well before 1818's charter)[lower-alpha 10][lower-alpha 11] ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818.

During the summer of 1827, a railroad was built from the mines at Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk. With one or two unimportant exceptions, this was the first railroad in the United States.[lower-alpha 12]

It was nine miles in length, and occupied the route of the old wagon road most of the distance.

Summit Hill, lying nearly a thousand feet higher than Mauch Chunk, the cars on the road made this descent by gravity, passing the coal, at their destination to the boats in the river by means of inclined planes and chutes. The whole of this plan was evolved by Josiah White, under whose direction it was consummated in a period of about four months. The rails were of rolled bar-iron, three-eighths of an inch in thickness and an inch and a half in width, laid upon wooden ties, which were kept in place by means of stone ballast.

The loaded cars or wagons, as they were then termed, each having a capacity of approximately one and a half tons, were connected in trains of from six to fourteen, being attended by men who regulated their speed.

Turn-outs were provided at intervals and the empty cars were drawn back to the mines by mules. They descended with the trains in specially constructed cars, affording a novel and rather ludicrous spectacle.[lower-alpha 13]

Thirty minutes was the average time consumed in making the descent, while the weary trip back to the mines required three hours.

— Brenckman, History of Carbon County (1894)

The wagon road to become gravity railroad ran from what later became Summit Hill along the south side of Pisgah Ridge to Mount Pisgah to the canal's loading chute over 200 feet (61 m) above the canal banks,[lower-alpha 14]

The Room Run or Rhume Run Railroad was a shortline coal road built by Josiah White from a ravine in the Nesquehoning Valley

During the winters ending in 1821–1823, the partners learned a lot about icing damage and canal construction to prevent heavy damages by sustaining them, but also learned some damages would be sustained each winter. The need for an injection of new cash to do such repairs in 1821 lead to the company reorganization into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which also bought out George Hauto's share and left White and Hazard with majority ownership; having injected most additional funding from their own pockets.[18] In 1823 the upper four locks on the Lehigh Navigation from Lehigh Gap to Mauch Chunk were rebuilt as proof of concept test beds with a spacious bi-directional long lock system. White had offered the legislature to build a ship & steam tug capable two way lock canal system from Mauch Chunk down to Philadelphia along the Lehigh and Delaware in 1823, but was rebuffed in 1824, with the promise the state would build the Delaware Canal. Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company had to build coal arks and exhausted thousands of acres of timberlands for the one-time, single use boats, costing the company dearly while the state delayed.

The state rejected this idea also, and in 1827 to build a canal along the Delaware River as part of the state canal system.
It was to link Easton with Bristol, a length of 60 miles (97 km), and would have 24 lift locks to accommodate the elevation differential of 180 feet (55 m).

The state canal was a case of blatant political corruption. Badly designed, and poorly built, with narrow 11 feet (3.4 m) that soon proved to be a serious limitation on boats using both canals, and did not even have provision for an adequate supply of water

— Center for Canal History and Technology, The Delaware and Lehigh Canals[3]

• Delaware Division Canal Company – The State of Pennsylvania had embarrassed itself with a botched canal ditch construction some 60 miles (97 km) the terminii of the Lehigh Canal from Easton and parallel to the Delaware River to Bristol, a suburb of North Philadelphia. In 1831 after it opened and leaked prodigiously, the commonwealth had to ask Josiah White to step in and repair the new ditch, then, common sense injected, asked the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to operate the venture when his fixes enabled it to open in 1834. Consequently, the company spawned the Lehigh Navigation Coal Company subsidiary,[21] which operated both canals into the 1930s. In mid-1832 White's men had repaired the most egregiously leaking sections well enough to begin operations, and the company spun-off the Lehigh Navigation Coal Company the LNC Co., a subsidiary operating company with its own management.

Founders White and Hazard were at first, mill and foundry owners acting decisively to secure fuel for their main businesses prior to 1815's application for right-of-way legislation and optioning the sad-sack LCMC operations. In 1814, the partners had actually invested first in the rival Schuylkill Canal where they'd become disgusted with the planning, funding, and lack of commitment by other board members—their concerns take on added weight given the Schuylkill didn't operate until 1823 when the company blazed the way. White's innovative Bear Trap lock-gate and system was based on creating a triggerable artificial flood, depending upon water flow to float the boats past the rapids obstructions. It is little wonder that as he surveyed the Lehigh, he also made note where a water-powered mill could be harnessed, and the legislative act would effectively give the LNC ownership of the entire river. These rights were not released back to Pennsylvania until 1964.[lower-alpha 15]

So once 'emergency' improvements on the canal[lower-alpha 16] used its founder's knowledge and experience on the Little Schuylkill River to develop the waterpower sites along its waterways into early industrial parks. By 1840, the Abbott Street area near Lock 47, now part of Hugh Moore Park in Easton, Pennsylvania, employed over 1,000 men in almost a dozen factories. This fostered the industries of Allentown, Bethlehem, and their products and the connection with the Delaware Canal, managed for the state by the company after 1834<ref, the development of the Industrial Revolution of greater Philadelphia.

With rights of eminent domain granted by the 1837 revisions to the Main Line of Public Works legislation, the 45 miles (72 km) Lower Lehigh Navigation was extended upriver another 39 miles (63 km) through the Upper Lehigh Canal and then through the Lehigh Gorge from Jim Thorpe to White Haven and completed in 1843, giving it the largest carrying capacity of any U.S. canal.

With a unified legislative and executive push, the company 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 a new extension of its Lehigh Canal through the difficult terrain of the Lehigh Gorge. With the political push to connect Philadelphia and the Delaware River to the Northern Coal Fields in the Wyoming Valley and the Susquehanna River, the company 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.

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 Valley region.

The company built a succession of small but influential short-line 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

• Nesquehoning & Mahanoy Railroad: Having gained civil engineering experience running a freight line through most of the length of the Lehigh River and across the Delaware River, the company chafed at the transport bottleneck of the Panther Creek Valley. With the increasing power of locomotives, the company surveyed and pushed a seven-mile grade up through the winding slopes north of the Nesquehoning Ridge, with several descents, connecting near Hazelton, and the wider valleys of Mahanoy Creek, including that at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, along the Little Schuylkill River near the outlet of Panther Creek. From Tamaqua, tracks also reached along the Schuylkill Valley to feed the industries of Reading, Pennsylvania, and surrounds.
• Panther Creek Railroad: Having reached Tamaqua, the company built the PCR to reach the main coal-bearing lands 5 to 6 miles to the east up the Panther Creek Valley.
• Hauto Tunnel: Shipping large heavy coal consists over the steep gradients of the Nesquehoning shortline was costly, so eventually the company cut a mile-long tunnel through Nesquehoning Ridge into downtown Lansford, Pennsylvania, which became for a time the seat of its corporate headquarters. This gave the company three means of bringing coal from its mines along Pisgah Ridge and Nesquehoning Mountain until it sold the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, which was operating mostly as a prime tourist attraction: the world's first roller coaster.

The acquisition of the Lehigh and New England[22] allowed the company to stop leasing rights to the CNJ and transfer them instead to the new acquisition.

In 1932, the Lehigh Navigation was closed after maintenance expenses surpassed operating revenues.

By the middle of the 20th century, Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, once a widely diversified company, had become largely dependent on coal revenues, while subsidiaries owned the railroads and other more-profitable arms. The softening of demand for coal, as railroads replaced steam locomotives with diesels and other forms of heating came into wider use, cut deeply into corporate profits. 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.

In 1986, shareholders dissolved the company after it sold its last business, Cella's Chocolate Covered Cherries, to Tootsie Roll.[6]

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 is 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,[23] the company was purchased by one of its bigger creditors[23] at auction, BET Associates, who were affiliated with Toll Brothers.[23] 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.

• Fred Brenckman (1913) [1884]. HISTORY OF CARBON COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA (2nd ed.). J. Nungesser, Harrisburg, PA.
• Archer B. Hulbert (1920). "The Mastery Of The Rivers". The Paths of Inland Commerce, A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway. Chronicle of trail, road, and waterway. Yale University Press. hdl:2027/mdp.39015026457898.
• Clint Chamberlin. "LEHIGH AND SUSQUEHANNA DIVISION". North East Rails. Retrieved 14 September 2013.
• Alfred Mathews & Ausin N. Hungerford (1884). The History of the Counties of Lehigh & Carbon, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Ancestry.com, Transcribed from the original in April 2004 by Shirley Kuntz.
• Frank Whelan (1986-06-08). "Ex-executive Recalls Decline And Fall Of Lehigh Coal And Navigation Co". The Morning Call, June 08, 1986. Archived from the original on 2016-08-21.