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Panther Creek | |
---|---|
Physical characteristics | |
Source | |
• location | Over the Lehigh Valley drainage divide due west of Palmerton, Pennsylvania below Mount Pisgah (below the join of Pisgah Ridge with Nesquehoning Mountain and Mauch Chunk Mountain). |
Mouth | |
• location | Little Schuylkill River at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania |
• coordinates | 40°47′46″N75°57′58″W / 40.79600°N 75.96613°W |
Length | c. 8 mi (13 km) |
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.
The creek's valley to the west is historically and industrially important having been mostly owned by the historically significant Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company which eventually built the Panther Creek Railroad from Lansford to Tamaqua and the Hauto Tunnel to haul coal from the copious anthracite deposits, collieries, and coal breakers along an easier route than up and over the mountains to Jim Thorpe and the Lehigh Canal via Summit Hill and the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, North America's second-oldest operational railroad and its first Gravity and Switchback railroads. The west branch of Panther Creek (Lansford/Coaldale) has been heavily polluted with acid mine drainage over the years and mysteriously has even gone dry in the last few months of 2024, which should not happen by any act of nature. While no care has ever been given to the high potential west branch of Panther Creek. Great care has gone into cleaning the acid mine drainage of the east branch of Panther Creek in Nesquehoning and it has turned into a prime trout fishery over the years as it makes it's way to meet the Lehigh River.
The coal seams of the valley were the first deposits discovered and exploited by any company beginning with surface deposits along the south ridge leading to the founding of Summit Hill, then Lansford in western Carbon County, then the downstream towns of Coaldale and Tamaqua in eastern Schuylkill County.
The new company, a leaned-down and reorganized Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company still mines the coal deposits in the valley and owns all of its mineral rights.
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.
Summit Hill is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 3,034 at the 2010 census.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Erskine Hazard (1790-1865) and his partner Josiah White were industrialists who developed infrastructure projects in Pennsylvania and throughout the Northeastern United States, which proved influential in ushering in the Industrial Revolution in the United States, which served as a foundation for the rise of the United States as the world's foremost economic power.
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.
Rahn Township, Pennsylvania was a former Pennsylvania township created from the lightly populated former Penn Township of Schuylkill County, in eastern Pennsylvania.
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.
The Room Run Railroad was an early American gravity railroad with self-acting planes. It was built by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to transport coal from the Room Run Mine in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania to landings at Mauch Chunk on the Lehigh River so it could be shipped on the Lehigh Canal to the Delaware River at Easton, Pennsylvania to markets in Philadelphia or New York City via the Delaware or Morris Canals.
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.