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.
Upper Providence Township is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2010 census, the township population was 21,219.
Schuylkill Haven is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough's population was 5,253 as of the 2020 census. Schuylkill Haven is situated along the Schuylkill River, for which it is named. Schuylkill Haven is a focal point of activity in southern Schuylkill County.
The Schuylkill River is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for 135 miles (217 km) from Pottsville southeast to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.
The Union Canal was a towpath canal that existed in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States during the 19th century. First proposed in 1690 to connect Philadelphia with the Susquehanna River, it ran approximately 82 mi from Middletown on the Susquehanna below Harrisburg to Reading on the Schuylkill River.
Manayunk is a neighborhood in the section of Lower Northwest Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania. Located adjacent to the neighborhoods of Roxborough and Wissahickon and also on the banks of the Schuylkill River, Manayunk contains the first canal begun in the United States.
The Main Line of Public Works was a package of legislation passed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1826 to establish a means of transporting freight between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It funded the construction of various long-proposed canal and road projects, mostly in southern Pennsylvania, that became a canal system and later added railroads. Built between 1826 and 1834, it established the Pennsylvania Canal System and the Allegheny Portage Railroad.
The Schuylkill Expressway, locally known as "the Schuylkill", is a freeway through southern Montgomery County and Philadelphia. It is the easternmost segment of Interstate 76 (I-76) in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It extends from the Valley Forge interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in King of Prussia, paralleling its namesake Schuylkill River for most of the route, southeast to the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River in South Philadelphia. It serves as the primary corridor into Philadelphia from points west. Maintenance and planning for most of the highway are administered through Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 6, with the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) maintaining the approach to the Walt Whitman Bridge.
The Schuylkill Canal, or Schuylkill Navigation, was a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, built as a commercial waterway in the early 19th-century. Chartered in 1815, the navigation opened in 1825, to provide transportation and water power.
East Falls is a neighborhood in Lower Northwest, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It lies on the east bank of the "Falls of the Schuylkill," cataracts submerged in 1822 by the Schuylkill Canal and Fairmount Water Works projects. East Falls sits next to the Germantown, Roxborough, Allegheny West, and the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhoods. Wissahickon Valley Park separates it from Manayunk, Philadelphia.
Swatara State Park is a 3,515-acre (1,422 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Bethel, Swatara and Union Townships, Lebanon and Pine Grove Township, Schuylkill Counties in Pennsylvania in the United States. 8 miles (13 km) of Swatara Creek lie within the park's boundaries, which are roughly formed by Pennsylvania Route 443 to the north and Interstate 81 to the south. The park is in a valley in the ridge and valley region of Pennsylvania between Second Mountain (north) and Blue Mountain (south).
The Lehigh Canal is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern regions of Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of 20 years beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton and present-day Jim Thorpe. In Easton, the canal met the Pennsylvania Canal's Delaware Division and Morris Canals, which allowed anthracite coal and other 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 Pennsylvania Canal, sometimes known as the Pennsylvania Canal system, was a complex system of transportation infrastructure improvements, including canals, dams, locks, tow paths, aqueducts, and viaducts. The canal was constructed and assembled over several decades beginning in 1824, the year of the first enabling act and budget items.
The Susquehanna Canal of the Pennsylvania Canal System was funded and authorized as part of the 1826 Main Line of Public Works enabling act, and would later become the Susquehanna Division of the Pennsylvania Canal under the Pennsylvania Canal Commission. Constructed early on in America's brief canal age, it formed an integral segment of the water focused transportation system which cut Philadelphia-Pittsburgh (pre-railroad) travel time from nearly a month to just four days.
The Leesport Lock House is a house accompanying a lock on the Schuylkill Canal in Leesport, Pennsylvania, USA. The house was built adjacent to the Leesport Locks #36 and #37 to allow canal barges to move quickly up and down the canal. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 9, 1977. The property was purchased in 1975 by a group of teachers and school directors from the Schuylkill Valley School District. They organized the Leesport Lockhouse Foundation. After paying the no interest mortgage, provided by The First National Bank of Leesport, they turned title to the property over to Berks County. The County purchased the neighboring car wash, built over a section of the locks, and transferred ownership to the Borough of Leesport. The property and programs are administered by the Leesport Lockhouse Foundation, Inc.
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, Schuylkill River Viaduct, also called the Reading Railroad Bridge and the Falls Rail Bridge, is a stone arch bridge that carries rail traffic over the Schuylkill River at Falls of Schuylkill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Located in Fairmount Park, the bridge also spans Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive, and Kelly Drive. The name Philadelphia & Reading Railroad (P&R) was later shortened to Reading Company.
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, in present-day Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in the American Industrial Revolution.
Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.
The Canal Age is a term of art used by science, technology, and industry historians. Various parts of the world have had various canal ages; the main ones belong to Egypt, Ancient Babylon, and the historical empires of India, China, Southeast Asia, and mercantile Europe. Cultures make canals as they make other engineering works, and canals make cultures. They make industry, and until the era when steam locomotives attained high speeds and power, the canal was by far the fastest way to travel long distances quickly. Commercial canals generally had boatmen shifts that kept the barges moving behind mule teams 24 hours a day. Like many North American canals of the 1820s-1840s, the canal operating companies partnered with or founded short feeder railroads to connect to their sources or markets. Two good examples of this were funded by private enterprise:
- The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company used vertically integrated mining raw materials, transporting them, manufacturing with them, and merchandising by building coal mines, the instrumental Lehigh Canal, and feeding their own iron goods manufacturing industries and assuaging the American Republic's first energy crisis by increasing coal production from 1820 onwards using the nation's second constructed railway, the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad.
- The second coal road and canal system was inspired by LC&N's success. The Delaware and Hudson Canal and Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad. The LC&N operation was aimed at supplying the country's premier city, Philadelphia with much needed fuel. The D&H companies were founded purposefully to supply the explosively growing city of New York's energy needs.
