Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company
The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company that operated in Pennsylvania from 1818 to 1964. It ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first vertically integrated company in the United States.
Building on two predecessor companies incorporated in 1818, founders Erskine Hazard and Josiah White entered the coal industry to serve customers seeking a steady supply of fuel for foundries and mills on the falls of the Schuylkill River. Their LC&N spearheaded the Industrial Revolution in the United States, accelerating regional industrial development by taking on civil engineering challenges thought impossible and creating important transport and mining infrastructure. Most importantly, the LC&N established the Lower Lehigh Canal and taught America to burn anthracite. By the early 1830s, the Lehigh Canal and its "bridging" river trip along the Delaware River inspired and connected four other canals.
History
The Company's success, along with White's reputation for advancing the state of mining and civil engineering, jumpstarted America's brief Canal Age. It also spurred investing in raw materials industries and bulk transportation infrastructure projects. Further, the dawdling funding efforts behind the Schuylkill Canal project was finally funded and finished once the LNC had showed the way. White and Hazard had backed the Schuylkill project since their mills were on the River, but became disgusted with the timid investment and management attitudes of its board, so explored the LCMC property and conducted feasibility examinations the winter of 1814–1815, so petitioned to build the canal that next year.Upon their return they inked what was effectively a no cost option to take over management of the LCMC mines and mining rights; guaranteeing one ear of corn per year as a rental for the next 20 years. built the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad and had its hands in many other northeastern Pennsylvania shortline railroads, spurs, and subsidiaries; created the Ashley Planes and made or supported means to other novel solutions of transport problems; and created transport corridors still important today.It also pioneered the mining of anthracite coal in the United States, acquiring virtually the entire eastern lobe of the Southern Pennsylvania Coal Region, and brought in Welsh experts to bootstrap Iron production using blast furnace technology in the Lehigh Valley, building the first six such furnaces and puddling furnaces to create steel, which the company then provided to its own wire rope manufactury, the countries first it set up in Mauch Chunk. Completing the vertical integration, the wire ropes were then marketed to other mining operations, cable railways, and other industries needing high tensile reliability in managing weighty loads.
Buying out partner George Hauto, and forming the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in 1822 by combining the Lehigh Coal Mining Company, the [|Lehigh Coal Company] and the Lehigh Navigation Company, it represented the first merger of interlocking companies in the United States. Five years later, the company built the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad, the first coal railroad and just the second railroad company in the country to be constructed after the Granite Railroad of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was founded by industrialists Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who sought to improve delivery of coal to markets. and a thickly accented German immigrant miner named Hauto.
The company is known in the Lehigh Valley as the "Old Company", as distinct from the later 1988-2010 company: the nearly same named Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company— the 'New Company', to the people of the region.
Development
In 1792, hunter Philip Ginter discovered coal on Sharpe Mountain—a peak on Pisgah Ridge near Summit Hill close to the border between Schuylkill and Carbon Counties. The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded the following year, but management proved weak and tried to operate in an absentee mode, the officers staying behind in comfort while sending expeditions out into the wilderness for trips of over a year under foremen. These troops would have to trek to the mine site, dig the coal, use mules to bring bags of it to the Lehigh, then cut down trees and build crude arks near Lausanne Landing and then, shoot the rapids of the Lehigh hoping to reach the Delaware. The LCMC only sporadically successfully got anthracite to Philadelphia and its rights were eventually absorbed by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company which leased its operational rights in predecessor Lehigh Coal Company.Lehigh Coal Mine Company
The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded in 1792 with enough money to buy in and around the Panther Creek Valley and along Pisgah Ridge, and the aim of hauling anthracite from the large deposits on Pisgah Mountain near what is now Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia via mule train to arks built near Lausanne on the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. The mining camps were over 9 miles from the Lehigh at Mauch Chunk. Sporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could get to fuel-hungry markets, but lost many a boatload on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River, so actually just as often lost money as made profits.Eventually, the owners sold some coal to Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill foundry at the Falls of the Schuylkill near Philadelphia. White and Hazard were delighted by the quality of the fuel, and subsequently bought the LCMC's final two barges to survive the trip down the Lehigh. Convinced they could much improve the reliability of its delivery, they began in 1815 to inquire after the rights to mine the LCMC's coal and hatched a plan to improve the navigation on the Lehigh as a key step.
Lehigh Coal Company
White and Hazard very shortly found themselves advised repeatedly that both the improvements, and the mining operation at Summit Hill, having each repeatedly failed miserably time after time, were both considered crackpot schemes, usually by differing groups of potential investors; the majority opinion being the improvements were more possible, and the coal mining was less likely to be a success. Accordingly, they secured other investors by forming two companies: The Lehigh Coal Company and the Lehigh Navigation Company, and began seeking legislative approval for improving the Lehigh River with a navigation.In 1817, they leased the Lehigh Coal Mine company's properties and took over operations, incorporating on Octo
ber 21, 1818, as the Lehigh Coal Company along with partner Hauto. They petitioned the legislature and propose acquiring rights to make improvements of the river, for which there was a string of supportive legislation going back decades.
In 1820, White and Hazard bought out Hauto and dissolved the LCC on April 21, 1820.
The next hurdle surprised White and Hazard—there were in general, as was witnessed by the legislator's comments, a wide divergence of opinion as to whether the Lehigh could be tamed, and perhaps more surprising, there were less backers of any scheme to continue mining coal from the lands held by LCMC—there were simply too many failures over the 24 years of its operations for the peace of mind of many investors. Accordingly, three times the funds were raised to improve the river as were raised to put the mining & delivery of coal onto a regular paying basis.
Given permission, the two companies went to work, and overstocked the market demand in 1820, having opened practical, though not ideal navigability of the Lehigh over four years ahead of their targeted 1824. Coal mining and delivery by grading a near constant descent mule track from Summit Hill to feed a loading chute at the huge slack water pool created at Mauch Chunk, went well as well; the coal deposits were essentially outcrops needing little effort to extract.
Riding this success, the two companies were merged into the Lehigh Navigation Company, resolved to apply the high tech of the American Canal Era to bringing coal to their foundries and the stoves and furnaces of Philadelphia and beyond.
Lehigh Navigation Company
Having displayed great technological skills by creating the world's first iron wire suspension bridge, which spanned the Schuylkill River at their wire works, White and Hazard schemed with other industrialists to secure a reliable source of anthracite.To move the coal to market, they entered political negotiations to acquire rights to tame the turbulent and rapids-ridden Lehigh River for navigation. By 1817-18, they had organized the separate Lehigh Navigation Company and had written stock flyers announcing plans to deliver barge loads of coal regularly to Philadelphia by 1824. The LCMC had trouble delivering Anthracite to Philadelphia at costs cheaper than imported Bituminous Coal from Britain or Virginia. Their last expedition had been sent out in 1813 during the war & blockade caused bituminous shortages, and by the time five arks were sent down river, three sank, leaving the directors of LCMC disgusted and unwilling to fund more losses.
The company began to prepare plans and surveyed sites, and when the state legislature approved the river work in 1818, immediately hired teams of men and began to install locks, dams, and weirs, including water management gates of their own novel design.
A brief history of the navigations beginnings as Brenckman related in 1884:
The canal head end needed a location where barges could be built and timber and coal could be brought into slack water. The challenge was to do it above the gap made by the east end of Mount Pisgah, a hard rock knob that towers 900 feet above the Lehigh River towns Jim Thorpe to the towns west, and Nesquehoning to its north. Both towns are built into the flanks, the :wikt:traverse|traverses, of the mountain, with flats along the river banks.
Within the next two years, White and Hazard constructed a descending navigation system that used their unique "bear trap" or hydrostatic locks, which allowed the passage of coal boats by means of artificial floods. The coal arrived at the head end from the mines at Summit Hill or down along the steep mule trail from near the headwaters of Panther Creek. It floated down the navigation; at journey's end, the barges were sold as fuel or for Delaware basin transports.
The navigation company began shipping significant quantities of coal by early 1819, ahead of expectations, and attained their goal of regular shipments in 1820.
In 1820, the company was combined with the Lehigh Coal Company with the ouster of George Hauto, but was not rechartered officially until 1822.
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company
By late 1820, four years ahead of their prospectus's targeted schedule, the unfinished but much improved Lehigh Valley watercourse began reliably transporting large amounts of coal to White's mills and Philadelphia. The nearly 370 tons of coal brought to market that year not only salved the winter's fuel shortage but created a temporary glut. After buying out co-founder George Hauto, White and Hazard reworked their lease deal with the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and merged it with the Lehigh Coal Company, acquiring ownership of its 10,000 acres spanning three parallel valleys in the from Mauch Chunk to Tamaqua. A few months later, they merged the LCC and the Lehigh Navigation Company. In late 1821, they filed papers to incorporate Lehigh Coal & Lehigh Navigation, which took effect in 1822.Non-mining Ventures
The LC&N Co. under both White and Hazard as operations managers was a company constantly looking for innovative solutions to increase business and revenues. The vertical integration many economists credit them with inventing would appeal to them as a very natural way to control costs, hence maximize profitability. The two, and the various members of the corporate board often heard of ideas that separately or together needed financial investment which the LC&N company would often join as investors, and often end up providing a later critical boost of finishing financing, investing in such ventures directly, or buying out at a later time as subsidiaries as things developed a proof of concept, track record, better promise, or dependency on another business.Blast Furnaces
Grand Lehigh Canal-Upper Canal Division
The June 6, 1862 flood proved to show a fatal flaw in White's grand dream. The Upper Grand contributed to its own demise in that the dams and locks necessary to allow the coal barges to travel on the river meant that huge pools of water sat at the ready. Once the heavy June rains began, and dams began to be breached, devastating tidal waves of flood water burst dam after dam causing a great flood and loss of life.John J. Leisenring Jr., then Superintendent of the LCN & Co. estimated that 200 people lost their lives from White Haven down to Lehighton. The state legislature stepped in and prohibited the LCN & Co. from rebuilding.
Railroads
;Primary reference:Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad
In 1827, the Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the of America's second railroad using the road bed of the wagon road built in 1818–19 in just a few months — a gravity railroad named the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad using wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate — to bring coal from mines to river more efficiently. The work went quickly since the right-of-way surveyed by White ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818.The wagon road to become gravity railroad ran from what later became Summit Hill along the south side of Pisgah Ridge to Mount Pisgah to the canal's loading chute over above the canal banks,
Room Run Railroad
The Room Run or Rhume Run Railroad was a shortline coal road built by Josiah White from a ravine in the Nesquehoning ValleyNon-railroad Companies
During the winters ending in 1821–1823, the partners learned a lot about icing damage and canal construction to prevent heavy damages by sustaining them, but also learned some damages would be sustained each winter. The need for an injection of new cash to do such repairs in 1821 lead to the company reorganization into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which also bought out George Hauto's share and left White and Hazard with majority ownership; having injected most additional funding from their own pockets. In 1823 the upper four locks on the Lehigh Navigation from Lehigh Gap to Mauch Chunk were rebuilt as proof of concept test beds with a spacious bi-directional long lock system.White had offered the legislature to build a ship & steam tug capable two way lock canal system from Mauch Chunk down to Philadelphia along the Lehigh and Delaware in 1823, but was rebuffed in 1824, with the promise the state would build the Delaware Canal. LC&N had to build coal arks and exhausted thousands of acres of timberlands for the one-time, single use boats, costing the company dearly while the state delayed.
- Delaware Division Canal Company - The State of Pennsylvania had embarrassed itself with a botched canal ditch construction some the terminii of the Lehigh Canal from Easton, PA and parallel to the Delaware River to Bristol, PA, a suburb of North Philadelphia. In 1831 after it opened and leaked prodigiously, the commonwealth had to ask Josiah White to step in and repair the new ditch, then, common sense injected, asked the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to operate the venture when his fixes enabled it to open in 1834. Consequently, LC&N Co. spawned the Lehigh Navigation Coal Company subsidiary, which operated both canals into the 1930s. In mid-1832 White's men had repaired the most egregiously leaking sections well enough to begin operations, and the LC&N Co. spun-off the Lehigh Navigation Coal Company the LNC Co., as a subsidiary operating company with its own management.
Mill Parks
So once 'emergency' improvements on the canal used its founder's knowledge and experience on the Little Schuylkill to develop the waterpower sites along its waterways into early industrial parks. By 1840, the Abbott Street area near Lock 47, now part of Easton's Hugh Moore Park, employed over 1,000 men in almost a dozen factories. This fostered the industries of Allentown, Bethlehem, and their products and the connection with the Delaware Canal
Blast Furnaces
In TBDL directors White and Hazard brought in Welsh technical experts to establish the Lehigh Valleys first Blast Furnaces.Wire Rope Manufactury
In TBDL, probably as part of the Ashley Planes cable railroad work up and spurred by the developing need to mine down shafts as surface deposits were exhausted, Josiah White and the LC&N created the nation's first Wire rope factory in Mauch Chunk.Upper Lehigh Canal
With rights of eminent domain granted by the 1837 revisions to the Main Line of Public Works legislation, the Lower Lehigh Navigation was extended upriver another through the Lehigh Gorge from Jim Thorpe to White Haven and completed in 1843, giving it the largest carrying capacity of any U.S. canal.Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad
With a unified legislative and executive push, LC&N spun off a subsidiary to build a railroad connection to the Susquehanna at Pittston just north of Wilkes-Barre over very rough terrain. The multi-modal project used a cable railroad called the Ashley Planes, and double-tracked connecting trackage from its foot at Ashley to the barge docks of Pittston and eventually linked up with the seven first-class railroads that drove spurs into the valley to haul anthracite. The Ashley Planes summit end connected to an assembly yard at Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, and sourced a steep double-tracked rail branch to White Haven where it had loading docks with a meeting of transport technologies feeding a new extension of its Lehigh Canal through the difficult terrain of the Lehigh Gorge. With the political push to connect Philadelphia and the Delaware to the Northern Coal Fields in the Wyoming Valley and to the Susquehanna River, LC&N formed the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad empowered with rights of eminent domain. Eventually, both the LC&N Company's Lehigh Navigation and the L&SRR were extended upriver through the Lehigh Gorge from Jim Thorpe to White Haven.Other LC&N railroads
By the later 1820s through the mid-1830s, the civic and business leaders of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey were anxious to connect their young factories with the markets of the trans-Appalachian territories being settled by tens of thousands of westward migrants. To compete with the B&O Railroad and Erie Canal, they launched the Main Line of Public Works to benefit the manufacturers of the Delaware Valley region.The LC&N built a succession of small but influential shortline railways as joint ventures with other investors, each of which concurrently solved an earlier irrealizable and intractable civil construction project. Ownership and operations of all these, as well as their initial railway, the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, were ultimately combined under the umbrella of their second, the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad
;Subsidiary shortlines
- Nesquehoning & Mahanoy Railroad: Having gained civil engineering experience running a freight line through most of the length of the Lehigh River and across the Delaware, the LC&N chafed at the transport bottleneck of the Panther Creek Valley. With the increasing power of locomotives, the company surveyed and pushed a seven-mile grade up through the winding slopes north of the Nesquehoning Ridge, with several descents, connecting near Hazelton, and the wider valleys of Mahanoy Creek, including that at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, along the Little Schuylkill River near the outlet of Panther Creek. From Tamaqua, tracks also reached along the Schuylkill Valley to feed the industries of Reading, Pennsylvania, and surrounds.
- Panther Creek Railroad: Having reached Tamaqua, the company built the PCR to reach the main coal-bearing lands 5 to 6 miles to the east up the Panther Creek Valley.
- Hauto Tunnel: Shipping large heavy coal consists over the steep gradients of the Nesquehoning shortline was costly, so eventually the company cut a mile-long tunnel through Nesquehoning Ridge into downtown Lansford, Pennsylvania, which became for a time the seat of its corporate headquarters. This gave the company three means of bringing coal from its mines along Pisgah Ridge and Nesquehoning Mountain until it sold the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, which was operating mostly as a prime tourist attraction: the world's first roller coaster.
Lehigh and New England Railroad
Decline
In 1932, the Lehigh Navigation was closed after maintenance expenses surpassed operating revenues.By the middle of the 20th century, the LC&N — once a widely diversified company — had become largely dependent on coal revenues, while subsidiaries owned the railroads and other more-profitable arms. The softening of demand for coal, as railroads replaced steam locomotives with diesels and other forms of heating came into wider use, cut deeply into corporate profits. Consequently, various boards oversaw gradual contraction of the company and sales of bits and pieces. In 1966, Greenwood Stripping Co. bought the remaining coal properties, most located as originally exploited along the Panther Creek Valley, and sold them eight years later to Bethlehem Mines Corp.
In 1986, shareholders dissolved the company after it sold its last business, Cella's Chocolate Covered Cherries, to Tootsie Roll.