Schuylkill County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the heart of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 143,049. The county seat is Pottsville.
Carbon County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,749. The county is also part of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Beaver Meadows is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 897 at the 2020 U.S. census.
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Lansford is a county-border borough (town) in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is located 37 miles (60 km) northwest of Allentown and 19 miles south of Hazleton in the Panther Creek Valley about 72 miles (116 km) from Philadelphia and abutting the cross-county sister-city of Coaldale in Schuylkill County.
Tamaqua is a borough in eastern Schuylkill County in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, United States. It had a population of 6,934 as of the 2020 U.S. census.
Blue Mountain, Blue Mountain Ridge, or the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania, is a ridge of the Appalachian Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. Forming the southern and eastern edge of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians physiographic province in Pennsylvania, Blue Mountain extends 150 miles (240 km) from the Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey border in the east to Big Gap in Franklin County in south-central Pennsylvania at its southwestern end.
The Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad, sometimes shortened to Reading and Northern Railroad, is a regional railroad in eastern Pennsylvania. Its headquarters is in Port Clinton. The RBMN provides freight service on 300 miles (480 km) of track. Its mainline consists of the Reading Division between Reading and Packerton and the Lehigh Division between Lehighton and Dupont. Its main freight cargo is anthracite coal.
The Lehigh Canal, or the Lehigh Navigation Canal, is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton and present-day Jim Thorpe. In Easton, the canal met the Delaware and Morris Canals, which allowed goods to be transported further up the U.S. East Coast. At its height, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long.
Lehigh Gorge State Park is a 4,548 acres (1,841 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Luzerne and Carbon Counties, Pennsylvania. The park encompasses a gorge, which stretches along the Lehigh River from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control dam in Luzerne County to Jim Thorpe in Carbon County. The primary recreational activity at Lehigh Gorge State Park is white water rafting.
Nesquehoning Creek is an east flowing 14.9-mile-long (24.0 km) tributary of the Lehigh River in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States.
Barnesville is an unincorporated community in Ryan Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally built to support nearby rust belt industries, the hamlet is between the center and eastern thirds of the Southern Anthracite Coal Region. The community is part of a wide-ranging township and is situated atop a summit and drainage divide flanked by two long climbs that are traversed by local transport infrastructure, railways with an important switching junction within the village, and Pennsylvania Route 54, which collects towns like beads on a string along a particular combination of connected valleys in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians.
The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in the rise of the American Industrial Revolution and early U.S. industrialization. The company ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first vertically integrated U.S. company.
Panther Creek is a west-draining left-bank tributary of the Little Schuylkill River's drainage basin and rises in the vicinity of the east side of Lansford in the plateau-like nearly flat terrain of the complex three-way saddle between Mount Pisgah to its east, Nesquehoning Ridge to the north and Pisgah Ridge to the south, both ridgelines flanking its entire course as it makes its way ENE-to-WSW.
Pisgah Mountain or Pisgah Ridge is a ridgeline running 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from Tamaqua to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. It is oriented north-northeast to south-southwest, and its north-side valley is followed by U.S. Route 209 from river gap to river gap. The ridge is a succession of peaks exceeding 1,440 feet (438.9 m) rising 300 to 540 feet above the boroughs of Lansford, Coaldale, and Tamaqua in the Panther Creek valley. The highest point on Pisgah Mountain is at 1,611 feet (491 m) in the borough of Summit Hill, which sits atop the ridge. Near Summit Hill was the "Sharpe Mountain" (peak) where in 1791 Phillip Ginter is documented as having discovered anthracite, leading to the formation of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company. In 1818 the Lehigh Coal Company took over the mines, and the mining camp gradually became a settlement and grew into Summit Hill.
Nesquehoning Mountain or Nesquehoning Ridge is a 15–17-mile-long (24–27 km) coal bearing ridge dividing the waters of Lehigh Valley to the north from the Schuylkill River valley and the several near parallel ridgelines of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians barrier range all local members of which run generally WSW-ENE in the greater overall area.
East Mauch Chunk is a former independent borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located along the east bank of the Lehigh River on the opposite bank from the town business district, it was part of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company, herein called the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad (NVRR), is now a fallen flag standard-gauge, steam era shortline railroad built as a coal road to ship the Anthracite mined in the Southeastern Coal Region on either side of the Little Schuylkill River tributary Panther Creek and the history making coal towns of the Panther Creek Valley down the Lehigh River transportation corridor to the Eastern seaboard.
Mauch Chunk Ridge or Mauch Chunk Mountain is a historically important barrier ridgeline north of the Blue Mountain escarpment and 3rd parallel ridgeline south of the Nesquehoning Creek after Nesquehoning Mountain and Pisgah Ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The three lengthy ridges and two valley formations together are literally the first ridges and valleys just south of the Poconos on the opposite side of the Lehigh River—geological formations which contain some of the richest Anthracite coal bearing sedimentary rocks of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Historically, the first Anthracite mines in America were located atop Pisgah Mountain at Summit Hill and caravanned by pack mule through the Mauch Chunk Creek valley. Then the historic Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Switchback Railroad, the second railway in North America was built along the Pisgah Mountain side of the same valley—and become quite a tourist attraction and is known as the world's first roller coaster, and would inspire others in purpose built amusement parks. The Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Switchback Railroad became only a tourist road in the 1890s and thrilled riders until it was liquidated in the 1930s, a casualty of the Great depression.
Lausanne, alternately named Lausanne Landing of the 1790s–1820s was a small settlement at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in marshy delta-like flood plain. Some historic references will mention the presence of a 'Landing Tavern' as the entirety of the town. Lausanne township was originally organized out of dense wilderness along an ancient Amerindian Trail, the "Warriors' Path" an important regional route as it connected the Susquehanna River settlements of the lower Wyoming Valley to those around Philadelphia. During the American Revolution, this route would become the rough 'Lausanne-Nescopeck Road', and after the turn of the century with a charter (1804), be improved into a toll road, the Lehigh and Susquehanna Turnpike. The fan-shaped plain provided some of the flattest landscape terrain in the entire area, and was able to support a few small farm plots, boat building, and a lumbermill. With nascent industrialization hitting America, widespread local deforestation occurred to feed lumber mills and craft transports. Exacerbating local clearcutting was convenient river access, for the Lehigh could support river arks. The Nesquehoning Creek mouth issues behind a small river island and sits above the long curved lake-like upper pool of the Lehigh below the outlet of the gorge, and its delta's smoothly sloped sides made an attractive landing beach, giving name to the Inn. With the popularity of the route and the roughness of the country, often called "The Switzerland of America" the location was a natural rest stop for the next leg to the north involved a steep climb and was over nine miles to the area of Beaver Meadows. Hence early on it added 'Landing Tavern' to its nicknames.
At that time, all of Northampton north of the Blue Mountains was known as the Towamensing District, "Towamensing" being an Indian word for "wilderness".
