Lehigh Canal

The Lehigh Canal is a water side, which was built to bring the transportation of anthracite coal from the Lehigh Valley to the buyers in the Northeast, especially Philadelphia. When it was discovered large deposits of anthracite coal, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded to bring the coal on the Lehigh River to the Delaware River and on about the connection to the Pennsylvania Canal (Delaware Division ) in Easton to the consumers in Philadelphia.

History

The Lehigh Canal was planned by the engineer Canvass White, who also designed the 1827-1829 built Erie Canal in New York. The so advanced navigability on the Lehigh River extended over 74 km between Mauch Chunk (present-day Jim Thorpe ) and Easton, with 52 lift-locks, eight weirs, eight dams and six aqueducts enabled the ships, overcomes a height difference of more than 105 m. A connection across the Delaware River to the Morris Canal through New Jersey allowed a more direct shipment to New York City.

In the 1830s, the channel is a 42 km has been extended until after Whitehaven. Here a difference in altitude of about 180 m was overcome by 20 dams and 29 locks.

The largest Transportleitstung on the channel in 1855 provided, as more than one million tons of cargo was transported. However, the competition from the rise of the railways, and a flood disaster on June 4, 1862 were steps to the demise of the channel. The canal was used until the 1940s as a transport route, about a decade longer than other similar channels, and was the last functioning towpath canal with in North America. The largest part of the channel was sold in 1962 to private and public organizations, the use for recreational purposes the channel.

Several sections of the canal in 1978 entered in the National Register of Historic Places. A 13- km-long segment of the Leinpfads of Freemansburg over Bethlehem to Allentown was transformed into a path for walkers and cyclists. It runs along the river and one still in the operating railway. A section at Jim Thorpe can be sailed by pleasure boats, as well as other short sections. Parts of the channel and the towpath were worn by the weather conditions and are unsafe.