X-Nico

unusual facts about Lehigh Canal



Exeter, Pennsylvania

In the 1830s the region entered a boom period and began shipping coal by the Pennsylvania Canal, and by the 1840s even down the Lehigh Canal to Allentown, Philadelphia, Trenton, Wilmington, New York City, and other east coast cities and ports via the connecting engineering works of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company such as the upper Lehigh Canal, the Ashley Planes and the early Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, along with other railroads that flocked to or were born in the area.

Lehigh Gorge State Park

This is the important northern entrance into the river cut gully or gap between highlands, and was an important barge loading transshipment point on the newly extended upper Lehigh Canal fed initially by a shortline railroad from the Mountain Top yard dating from the 1837 enabling legislation set up to join the Lehigh and Susquehanna Valleys via Mountain Top and the Ashley Planes incline railway.

Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad

The Pennsylvania Canal was conceived in the mid-1820s by Philadelphia merchants inspired by the obvious impact of the Lehigh Canal and the emerging markets of the three decades of steady emigration into the near west, the Ohio Country and Northwest Territory and other lands of the Louisiana Purchase (1803).


see also