Nesquehoning Creek is an east flowing 14.9-mile-long (24.0 km) [1] tributary of the Lehigh River in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States. [2]
Nesquehoning Creek joins the Lehigh River 2 miles (3.2 km) upstream of the borough of Jim Thorpe in Carbon County. [2]
Nesquehoning is a name derived from a Native American language purported to mean "at the black lick". [3]
Nesquehoning Creek rises along the slopes of Nesquehoning Ridge and Broad Mountain and flows through two man-made lakes in its descent through a generally steep sided gully bottomed V-shaped valley. Along most of its run the stream hugs Broad Mountain which contributes tributary waters and digs it deeper below the navigable floor of the valley.
Nesquehoning Creek encompasses a 34 square miles (88 km2) sq-mi drainage area between Broad Mountain to the northwest and the north along the left bank of its generally eastern course and Nesquehoning Mountain to the south. It rises in the peaks flanking join of the two ridgelines in a saddle at Hometown, PA and terminates in the Lehigh River about two miles below the town of Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania in the shadow of Mount Pisgah from which several minor unnamed tributary streams descend adding their waters. All the mountains in the area are among a series of near parallel ridgelines in the region. Approximately 7.2 square miles (18.6 km2) of the drainage basin or watershed is located in Schuylkill County while 26.7 square miles (69.2 km2) is located in Carbon County.
Nesquehoning Creek originates in two forested gullies diametrically opposed N-to-S along the east edge of Hometown, the major fork on the slopes of Broad Mountain to the north and the minor to the south on the last minor peak of Nesquehoning Ridge. From their confluence the creek flows south for about 2 miles (3.2 km) then turns to the northeast and flows into and through Greenwood Lake, which is nearly a mile long. [4] Approximately 600 feet (180 m) downstream from the spillway, it discharges into Lake Hauto, both lakes being man-made. [4] It then continues to the northeast in a relatively narrow valley over its steepest stretch then flattens out and slows making its way through Nesquehoning, which is a right bank town. The stream then travels down a narrow undeveloped ladder or rapids section where its elevation drops significantly to its confluence with the Lehigh River opposite and downstream from the Lehigh River Gorge around the bend from Jim Thorpe, PA formed by the roots of Mount Pisgah. Six left bank tributaries enter the stream below Hauto Dam from State Game Lands No. 141 before and west of the 1,563 feet (476.4 m) summit on Broad Mountain, the uppermost named 'Broad Run', the lower 'Deep Run' being the largest and named, the other four being short and relatively insignificant rills.
The heavily forested, relatively steep slopes of Broad and Nesquehoning Mountains and the occasional culm piles characterize the land within the watershed. All travel is channeled in the area by the terrain, so north-south oriented highways are rare and need a saddle pass such as at the streams headwater area for such to cross the valleys. Consequently, Hometown, a small high-elevation outlier of Tamaqua sits in such a pass astride the junction of Pennsylvania Route 54 and Pennsylvania Route 309 and contains railroad switch junctions as well that connect trackage to the Wyoming Valley, points south and the Panther Creek Valley via Tamaqua of the Blue Mountain and points west through the Mahanoy Creek valley.
The Nesquehoning Creek valley consists of some residential and industrial development, including a power plant, but was primarily a transit corridor. The Hauto Dam constructed opposite the north entrance of the mile-long Hauto Railway Tunnel protected a railroad switching yard for the coal trains servicing the mines in Lansford and Coaldale inside the Panther Creek valley on the opposite side of Nesquehoning Mountain. Nesquehoning Junction is a named [5] small railyard downstream and within the town of that name along the lower creek. Right bank urban development is concentrated in the Borough of Nesquehoning, left bank development in New Columbus opposite Nesquehoning and at the source region in Hometown.
Large areas in the valley have been dramatically disturbed by coal mining related activities. Much of the runoff from strip mines is retained in abandoned pits and therefore lesser amounts of surface runoff is discharged into Nesquehoning Creek. The middle two lesser tributary rills noted previously join in one such containment pond in an old Broad Mountain strip mine just above Nesquehoning.
The use of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad, Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) and route PA-54 marks the importance of the creeks' valley as an important transportation corridor in an area where road beds are highly constricted. The trackage today is used by both the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad and Norfolk Southern. The watershed encompasses four municipalities.
U.S. Route 209 climbs up inside the V-shaped gully of the westernmost of these from the beginning terminus junction with PA-54 within downtown Nesquehoning up over the ridge to the headwaters region of the Panther Creek Valley across the Nesquehoning Ridge drainage divide into the valley formed with Pisgah Ridge.
Part of the waters are pooled in Lake Hauto above the Hauto Dam in the Hamlet of Hauto, near where the historically important Hauto Tunnel serviced the many coal breakers of Lansford, Coaldale, and historic Summit Hill. The Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania (CNJ), both Class I railroads ran trackage up slope to cross north and west over the mountain ridges.
The stream runs through the following municipalities source-to-mouth:
Carbon County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,749. The county is part of the Northeast Pennsylvania region of the state.
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.
Coaldale is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. Initially settled in 1827, it was incorporated in 1906 from part of the former Rahn Township; it is named for the coal industry—wherein, it was one of the principal early mining centers. Coaldale is in the southern Anthracite Coal region in the Panther Creek Valley, a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River, along which U.S. Route 209 was eventually built between the steep climb up Pisgah Mountain from Nesquehoning (easterly) and its outlet in Tamaqua, approximately five miles to the west.
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.
The Lehigh and New England Railroad was a Class I railroad located in Northeastern United States that acted as a bridge line. It was the second notable U.S. railroad to file for abandonment in its entirety after the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. It was headquartered in Philadelphia.
Black Creek is a 7.6-mile-long (12.2 km) brook tributary of the Lehigh River in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, in the United States,. Its waters start at the very south edge of Weatherly, Pennsylvania at the confluence of Beaver and Hazle Creeks, then runs nearly due east to its mouth on the Lehigh River in Maple Hollow at the former railroad depot of Penn Haven Junction just east of Hinkles Valley. The confluence was a waypoint along the 19th-century Lehigh & Susquehanna Turnpike Black Creek has two major tributaries joining within Weatherly, the 7 miles (11 km) long Beaver Creek The tributary Quakake Creek, is the more dispersed and disorganized source waters, originating in over half-a-dozen small streams; it is also listed by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) as a variant name for Black Creek.
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 Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LCAN) (1988–2010) was a modern-day anthracite coal mining company headquartered in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. It acquired many properties and relaunched the Lehigh Coal Companies brand in 1988. The LCAN ran strip mining operations in the Panther Creek Valley east of Lansford, Pennsylvania along U.S. Route 209 with vast properties dominating the coal areas of Tamaqua, Coaldale, and Lansford.
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, 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 American Industrial Revolution.
Panther Creek is a 2 branch creek running through parts of Schuylkill and Carbon County. The west-draining branch tributary of the Little Schuylkill River's drainage basin and rises in the vicinity of the east side of Lansford and Coaldale in the plateau-like nearly flat terrain of the complex three-way saddle between Mount Pisgah. It continues to flow through the towns of Coaldale into Tamaqua where it meets the Little Schuylkill River. The Panther Creek branch 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 east-northeast to west-southwest. Starting in Nesquehoning it eventually runs into the Lehigh River just outside of Jim Thorpe.
Pisgah Mountain, or Pisgah Ridge on older USGS maps, is a ridgeline running 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from Tamaqua to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania from the Little Schuylkill River water gap to the Lehigh River water gap.
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.
Sharp Mountain or Sharp Ridge in eastern central Pennsylvania in the United States is a ridgeline (fold) of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians cut through on its east-side in the Tamaqua gap by the Little Schuylkill River which sunders it from the eastern extension of the ridgeline, the Nesquehoning Ridge. The ridgeline, located in the heart of Pennsylvania's anthracite Coal Region, drains to the Schuylkill River along its western slopes and into the Little Schuylkill River tributary of the Schuylkill River on its east.
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.
Broad Mountain or Broad Ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians in Carbon County and Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania is a steep-faced, anthracite-bearing barrier ridge just south of both Beaver Meadows and Weatherly, north of Nesquehoning and west and south of the Lehigh River basin west of the southwest border of the Poconos. The mountain ridge line is mostly flat and looks very similar to the man-made piles of culm in the region from the roads and towns looking up.
The Hauto Tunnel, dug in 1871–72, was a 1.1-mile-long (1.8 km) single-track railway tunnel crossing under the barrier ridge of Nesquehoning Mountain between Lansford, Pennsylvania, in the Panther Creek Valley and the Central Railroad of New Jersey trackage near the dam of the Hauto Reservoir impoundment about 1.3 miles (2.1 km) above Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania. The tunnel was significant for cutting nearly 15 difficult mountainous miles (24 km) off the trip to the Lehigh Canal terminal or, by rail, to other eastern coal companies, in the era when anthracite was the king of energy fuels.
Lausanne Landing, Pennsylvania was a small settlement at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River. 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.
The Panther Creek Railroad had its origins in 1849. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) constructed it between Lansford, PA and the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad operating as the Little Schuylkill Railroad in Tamaqua, PA. LC&N believed a direct route to take Panther Valley coal to eastern markets and a tunnel connecting Lansford to Hauto would open up possibilities with the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad. It also allowed the LC&N to cease coal shipments to the Lehigh Canal on the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, operating since 1827.