{"history":[],"article":{"id":"1f7be90c-cc41-4d5c-9c18-6e9b6f41ff03","title":"Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company","slug":"lehigh-coal-navigation-company","content":":::summary\n:::\n\n# \n**Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company** was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, now known as [Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/jim-thorpe-pennsylvania).\nThe company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in the [American Industrial Revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution-in-the-united-states).\nThe company ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first [vertically integrated](https://bliptext.com/articles/vertical-integration) company in the United States.\n# [Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's corporate headquarters in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, across the street from the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, in November 2007 | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Jim///Thorpe///Lehigh///Broadway///2898px.jpg]\n\n# History\n\n## 18th century\nIn 1792, a hunter named Philip Ginter discovered [anthracite coal](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthracite) on [Pisgah Mountain](https://bliptext.com/articles/pisgah-mountain) near present-day [Summit Hill, Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/summit-hill-pennsylvania) close to the border [Schuylkill](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-county-pennsylvania) and [Carbon](https://bliptext.com/articles/carbon-county-pennsylvania) counties.\nThe following year, in 1793, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded, but management proved weak and tried to operate in an absentee mode.\nCompany personnel ambitiously attempted to trek to the mine site, dig the anthracites, and then use mules to transport bags of it to the [Lehigh River](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-river), which required cutting down trees and building crude [arks](https://bliptext.com/articles/ark-boat) near [Lausanne Landing](https://bliptext.com/articles/lausanne-landing) and then shooting the [Lehigh River](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-river)'s rapids, hoping to reach the river's confluence with the [Delaware River](https://bliptext.com/articles/delaware-river) at [Easton](https://bliptext.com/articles/easton-pennsylvania) on the [Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/pennsylvania) border with [New Jersey](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-jersey).\nThe Lehigh Coal Mining Company was sporadically successfully in mining and transporting anthracite coal to [Philadelphia](https://bliptext.com/articles/philadelphia), and its rights were eventually absorbed by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which leased their own operational rights from their predecessor, the Lehigh Coal Company.\n# [Map of the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Schuylkill-Lehigh///River///Drainage///Divides///USGS%2C///Hazelton-Mauch///Chunk///%26///Mountain///Quads%2C///NW%2BNE-4.jpg]\n\n### Lehigh Coal Mine Company\nIn 1792, the **Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC)** was founded.\nIt was incorporated the following year, in 1793, and the company also acquired 10000 acres in and around [Panther Creek Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/panther-creek-valley) and [Pisgah Mountain](https://bliptext.com/articles/pisgah-mountain), and the aim of hauling [anthracite coal](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthracite) from the large deposits on [Pisgah Mountain](https://bliptext.com/articles/pisgah-mountain) near what is now [Summit Hill, Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/summit-hill-pennsylvania), to [Philadelphia](https://bliptext.com/articles/philadelphia) via [mule train](https://bliptext.com/articles/mule-train-transport) to [arks](https://bliptext.com/articles/ark-boat) built near Lausanne on the [Lehigh](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-river) and [Delaware](https://bliptext.com/articles/delaware-river) rivers.\nThe mining camps were over nine miles from the Lehigh River at Mauch Chunk.\nSporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could mine to fuel-hungry markets but lost many a boatload on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River, contributing to lost operating profits for the company and sometimes outright losses.\nThe owners later sold some coal to [Josiah White](https://bliptext.com/articles/josiah-white) and Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill [foundry](https://bliptext.com/articles/foundry) at the [Schuylkill River](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-river) falls near [Philadelphia](https://bliptext.com/articles/philadelphia).\nWhite 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 River.\n\n## 19th century\nIn 1815, 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.\nIn 1818, building on two predecessor companies, founders [Erskine Hazard](https://bliptext.com/articles/erskine-hazard) and [Josiah White](https://bliptext.com/articles/josiah-white) entered the [coal industry](https://bliptext.com/articles/coal-mining) to serve customers seeking a steady supply of fuel for foundries and mills on the falls of the [Schuylkill River](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-river).\nIts role in accelerating regional industrial development by taking on civil engineering challenges initially thought impossible and creating important transport and mining infrastructure, proved influential in spearheading the [Industrial Revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) in the [United States](https://bliptext.com/articles/united-states).\nThe company also established the [Lehigh Canal](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-canal), whose construction began in 1818.\nThe Lehigh Canal became usable in 1820, was improved further between 1821 and 1824, and was finally transformed into a two-way canal between 1827 and 1829.\nThe Lehigh Canal played a hugely influential role in the nation's ability to transport [anthracite coal](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthracite), a primary energy source at the time, to the company's primary markets in the [Northeastern United States](https://bliptext.com/articles/northeastern-united-states).\nBy the early 1830s, the Lehigh Canal and its bridges along the [Delaware River](https://bliptext.com/articles/delaware-river) inspired the development and connection of four other regional canals.\nLehigh Coal & Navigation Company's success, along with White's reputation for advancing the state of mining and civil engineering, jump started the [Canal Age](https://bliptext.com/articles/canal-age) in the U.S. It also spurred historically significant investments in raw materials and bulk transportation infrastructure projects.\nThe company also supported funding efforts behind the [Schuylkill Canal](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-canal) project, which began in 1814, and was finally funded and finished with the company's support.\nWhite 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 they explored property and feasibility examinations elsewhere in 1814–1815 and petitioned to build the canal that next year.\nUpon their return, the company's two founders took over Lehigh Coal Mining Company's mines and mining rights in a 20-year lease.\"Soon after this failure, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who were engaged in the manufacture of wire at the Falls of Schuylkill, having obtained good results in their experiments with the coal they had purchased from Cist, Miner and Robinson, secured control of the entire property of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company under the terms of a lease for 20 years. George F. A. Hanto joined them in the venture and was largely depended upon to secure the necessary financial assistance to make the property productive.\nUnder the conditions of the lease, it was stipulated that, after a given time for preparation, they should deliver for their own benefit at least forty thousand bushels of coal annually in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts, and should pay, if demanded, one ear of corn as a yearly rental.\", Brenckman, pp. 77–78 built the [Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-and-susquehanna-railroad) and had its hands in many other northeastern Pennsylvania shortline railroads, spurs, and subsidiaries; created the [Ashley Planes](https://bliptext.com/articles/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](https://bliptext.com/articles/coal-mining) of [anthracite coal](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthracite) in the United States, acquiring virtually the entire eastern lobe of the Southern Pennsylvania [Coal Region](https://bliptext.com/articles/coal-region), and brought in Welsh experts to bootstrap Iron production using [blast furnace](https://bliptext.com/articles/blast-furnace) technology in the [Lehigh Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-valley), building the first six such furnaces and [puddling furnaces](https://bliptext.com/articles/puddling-furnace) to create steel, which the company then provided to its own [wire rope](https://bliptext.com/articles/wire-rope) (steel cable) manufactury, the countries first it set up in Mauch Chunk.\nCompleting 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.\nIn 1822, Lehigh Coal Company bought out partner George Hauto and formed the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) by combining the Lehigh Coal Mining Company, the Lehigh Coal Company, which was leased, and the Lehigh Navigation Company.\nThe transactions represented the first merger of interlocking companies in the nation's history.\nFive years later, the company built the [Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauch-chunk-switchback-railway), the first coal railroad and just the second railroad company in the country to be constructed after the [Granite Railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/granite-railroad) in [Quincy, Massachusetts](https://bliptext.com/articles/quincy-massachusetts).\nThe company was founded by industrialists [Josiah White](https://bliptext.com/articles/josiah-white) and [Erskine Hazard](https://bliptext.com/articles/erskine-hazard), who sought to improve delivery of coal to markets.\nand a thickly=accented [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/germans) immigrant miner named Hauto.Hurlbert, Chapter III, quote: Believing that coal could be obtained more cheaply from Mauch Chunk than from the mines along the Schuylkill, White, Hauto, and Hazard formed a company, entered into negotiation with the owners of the Lehigh mines, and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of 20 years at an annual rental of one ear of corn.\nThe company is known in the [Lehigh Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-valley) as the \"Old Company\", as distinct from the later 1988–2010 company, which was very similarly named the [Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-coal-and-navigation-company) and was known as the \"New Company\" in the region.\n\n## Lehigh Coal Company\nWhite and Hazard very shortly found themselves on the receiving end of investor criticisms that the improvements and mining operation at [Summit Hill](https://bliptext.com/articles/summit-hill-pennsylvania) were failing and were both considered crackpot schemes.\nThe majority opinion was that improvements were possible, but that [coal mining](https://bliptext.com/articles/coal-mining) was less likely to succeed.\nThey secured additional investors by forming two companies, the Lehigh Coal Company (LCC) and the Lehigh Navigation Company, and began seeking legislative approval for improving the [Lehigh River](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-river)'s navigation.\n\"The desired opportunity 'to ruin themselves,' as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. The various powers applied for, and granted, embraced the whole range of tried and untried methods for securing 'a navigation downward once in three days for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons.' The State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the service given by the company did not meet 'the wants of the country.'\"\nIn 1817, they leased the Lehigh Coal Mine's properties and took over operations, incorporating it on October 21, 1818, as the Lehigh Coal Company.\nThey petitioned the legislature and proposed acquiring rights to make improvements to the Lehigh River for which there had been a string of supportive legislation going back decades.\nIn 1820, White and Hazard bought out their partner Hauto and dissolved the Lehigh Coal Company on April 21, 1820.\n\"Under the conditions of the lease, it was stipulated that, after a given time for preparation, they should deliver for their own benefit at least forty thousand bushels of coal annually in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts, and should pay, if demanded, one ear of corn as a yearly rental.\"\nWhite and Hazard found a wide divergence of opinion on whether the Lehigh River could be tamed, and even fewer believed that the mining of coal from the Lehigh River's surrounding lands was feasible.\nOn three separate occasions, funds were raised to improve the Lehigh River's functionality.\nBy 1820, the two companies had a marginal level of navigability on the Lehigh over four years ahead of their targeted 1824 deadline.\nCoal was transported by mule track from Summit Hill to a loading chute at the huge slack water pool at [Mauch Chunk](https://bliptext.com/articles/jim-thorpe-pennsylvania).\nRiding this success, the two companies were merged into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which resolved to apply [American Canal era](https://bliptext.com/articles/american-canal-era) technology, including canals, locks, and rails to bring coal to their foundries and the stoves and furnaces of [Philadelphia](https://bliptext.com/articles/philadelphia) and beyond.\nOn March 20, 1818, the company was granted various powers they sought to secure navigation in the Lehigh River, including with boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons on coal.\nPennsylvania's state government kept an eye on the operation, however, and a minority felt the two men might succeed.\nThe state reserved the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from [Easton](https://bliptext.com/articles/easton-pennsylvania) to [Stoddartsville](https://bliptext.com/articles/stoddartsville-historic-district) if the company did not succeed satisfactorily.\nCapital was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a committee of stockholders go over the Lehigh River ground and pass judgment on the probable success of the effort.\nThe report was favorable so far as the improvement of the Lehigh River was concerned.\nBut the nine-mile road from the river to the mines was unanimously voted impracticable.\n\"To give you an idea of the country over which the road is to pass,\" wrote one of the commissioners, \"I need only tell you that I considered it quite an easement when the wheel of my carriage struck a stump instead of a stone.\"\nThe public, meanwhile, was divided.\nSome held that the attempt to operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and would prove profitable to investors.\nOthers were just as positive that improvement's to the river's navigation would follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines.\nThe direct result of the examiners' report and of the public debate ultimately was the organization of the first interlocking companies in American commercial history.\nThe Lehigh Navigation Company was formed with a capital stock of $150,000 and the Lehigh Coal Company was launched with capital stock of $55,000.\nThis formed one of the most striking illustrations in American history of the dependence of a commercial venture upon methods of inland transportation.\nThe Lehigh Navigation Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh Coal Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the principle, which was later adopted by the railway, of dividing the total distance by the total descent in order to determine the grade.\nThe Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of sluice gates connecting with pools that could be filled with reserve water to be drawn upon as needed for navigation.\nBy 1819, the depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton was obtained.\nThe two companies were immediately amalgamated under the title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.\nBy 1823, the two companies delivered over two thousand tons of coal to market.\n\n## Lehigh Navigation Company\nHaving displayed great technological skills by creating the world's first iron wire suspension bridge, which spanned the [Schuylkill River](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-river) at their wire works, White and Hazard schemed with other industrialists to secure a reliable source of anthracite.\nTo move the coal to market, they entered political negotiations to acquire rights to tame the turbulent and rapids-ridden [Lehigh River](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-river) for navigation.\nBy 1817–18, they had organized the separate **Lehigh Navigation Company** and had written stock flyers announcing plans to deliver [barge](https://bliptext.com/articles/barge) loads of coal regularly to Philadelphia by 1824.\nThe LCMC had trouble delivering Anthracite to Philadelphia at costs cheaper than imported Bituminous Coal from Britain or Virginia.\nTheir last expedition had been sent out in 1813 during the war & blockade caused bituminous shortages, and by the time five [arks](https://bliptext.com/articles/ark-boat) were sent down river, three sank, leaving the directors of LCMC disgusted and unwilling to fund more losses.\nThe 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.\n\"The desired opportunity 'to ruin themselves,' as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818.Hurlbert, June, 1919, CHAPTER III. The Mastery Of The Rivers\"\nAccording to a history of the navigations, authored in 1884:\n\"The improvement of the Lehigh was begun at the mouth of the Nesquehoning Creek, during the summer of the year 1818, under the personal supervision of Josiah White. The plan adopted was to contract the channel of the river in the form of a funnel, wherever it was found necessary to raise the water, throwing up the round river-stones into low walls or wing dams, thus providing a regular descending navigation.\nIt soon became apparent that the carrying out of this plan would not insure sufficient water in seasons of drought to float a loaded ark or boat, and the success of the whole enterprise hung in the balance.\nWhite resorted to the expedient of creating artificial freshets.\nDams were constructed in Mauch Chunk in present-day Jim Thorpe, and sluice gates of a fairly new design, invented for the purpose by White, were used so water could be retained until required for use.\nWhen the dam became full and the water ran over it long enough for the river below to regain its ordinary depth, the sluice ates were let down, while the boats, which were lying in the pool above, passed down with the artificial flood.\nIn this manner the difficulty was overcome.\nCrews were sent up Mount Pisgah to improve the mule trails down from the coal deposits at Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, and others to build docks, boat building facilities, and the canal systems head end pool and locks.\"\nThe canal head end needed a location where barges could be built and timber and coal could be brought into slack water.\nThe challenge was to do it above the gap made by the east end of [Mount Pisgah](https://bliptext.com/articles/mount-pisgah-carbon-county-pennsylvania), a hard rock knob that towers 900 feet above the Lehigh River towns [Jim Thorpe](https://bliptext.com/articles/jim-thorpe-pennsylvania), formerly Mauch Chunk, to the towns west, and [Nesquehoning](https://bliptext.com/articles/nesquehoning-pennsylvania) to its north.\nBoth towns are built into the flanks, the [traverses](https://bliptext.com/articles/wikt-traverse), of the [mountain](https://bliptext.com/articles/pisgah-mountain), with flats along the river banks.\n(A few decades later, railroads would follow the canals.)\nWithin the next two years, White and Hazard constructed a descending navigation system that used their unique \"bear trap\" or hydrostatic [locks](https://bliptext.com/articles/lock-water-transport), which allowed the passage of coal boats by means of artificial floods.\nThe 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/panther-creek-little-schuylkill-river).\nIt floated down the navigation; at journey's end, the barges were sold as fuel or for Delaware basin transports.\nThe navigation company began shipping significant quantities of coal by early 1819, ahead of expectations, and attained their goal of regular shipments in 1820.\nIn 1820, the company was combined with the [Lehigh Coal Company](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-coal-company) with the ouster of George Hauto, but was not rechartered officially until 1822.\nBy late 1820, four years ahead of their [prospectus](https://bliptext.com/articles/prospectus-finance)'s targeted schedule, the unfinished but much improved [Lehigh Valley](https://bliptext.com/articles/lehigh-valley) watercourse began reliably transporting large amounts of coal to White's mills and Philadelphia.\nThe nearly 370 tons of coal brought to market that year not only salved the winter's fuel shortage but created a temporary glut.\nAfter 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 14 mi from [Mauch Chunk](https://bliptext.com/articles/jim-thorpe-pennsylvania) to [Tamaqua](https://bliptext.com/articles/tamaqua-pennsylvania).\nA few months later, they merged the LCC and the Lehigh Navigation Company.\nIn late 1821, they filed papers to incorporate **Lehigh Coal & Lehigh Navigation**, which took effect in 1822.\n\n# Non-mining ventures\nAs operations managers of the company from 1822 until 1865, White and Hazard were constantly seeking innovative solutions to increase business and revenues.\nThe vertical integration many economists credit them with inventing would appeal to them as a very natural way to control costs, hence maximize profitability.\nThe two, and the various members of the corporate board often heard of ideas that separately([?](https://bliptext.com/articles/)) or together needed financial investment which the 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.\n\n## Blast furnaces\n\"From that moment on, anthracite and the canals were of pivotal importance in the industrial development of the United States.\nUsing anthracite as fuel in its production, iron for the first time became plentiful and inexpensive.\nFor a period of thirty years, three decades that shaped the future of the valley, anthracite fueled furnaces throughout the Lehigh Valley produced greater quantities of iron than any other part of the nation.\"\n\n## Grand Lehigh Canal-Upper Canal Division\nThe June 6, 1862 flood proved to show a fatal flaw in White's grand dream.\nThe 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.\nOnce 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.\nJohn J. Leisenring Jr., then Superintendent of the LCN & Co. estimated that 200 people lost their lives from White Haven down to Lehighton.\nThe state legislature stepped in and prohibited the LCN & Co. from rebuilding.\n\n## Railroads\n\n### Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad\nIn 1827, the Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the 9.2 mi of America's second railroad using the road bed of the [wagon road](https://bliptext.com/articles/wagon-road) built in 1818–19 in just a few months — a [gravity railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/gravity-railroad) named the [Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauch-chunk-switchback-railway) using wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate (as did most more modern railways) — to bring coal from mines to river more efficiently.\nThe work went quickly since the right-of-way surveyed by White (well before 1818's charter) ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818.\n\"During the summer of 1827, a railroad was built from the mines at Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk. With one or two unimportant exceptions, this was the first railroad in the United States. It was nine miles in length, and occupied the route of the old wagon road most of the distance.\nSummit Hill, lying nearly a thousand feet higher than Mauch Chunk, the cars on the road made this descent by gravity, passing the coal, at their destination to the boats in the river by means of inclined planes and chutes.\nThe whole of this plan was evolved by Josiah White, under whose direction it was consummated in a period of about four months.\nThe rails were of rolled bar-iron, three-eighths of an inch in thickness and an inch and a half in width, laid upon wooden ties, which were kept in place by means of stone ballast.\nThe loaded cars or wagons, as they were then termed, each having a capacity of approximately one and a half tons, were connected in trains of from six to fourteen, being attended by men who regulated their speed.\nTurn-outs were provided at intervals and the empty cars were drawn back to the mines by mules.\nThey descended with the trains in specially constructed cars, affording a novel and rather ludicrous spectacle.\nThirty minutes was the average time consumed in making the descent, while the weary trip back to the mines required three hours.\"\nThe [wagon road](https://bliptext.com/articles/wagon-road) to become [gravity railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/gravity-railroad) ran from what later became [Summit Hill](https://bliptext.com/articles/summit-hill-pa) along the south side of [Pisgah Ridge](https://bliptext.com/articles/pisgah-ridge) to [Mount Pisgah](https://bliptext.com/articles/mount-pisgah-carbon-county-pennsylvania) to the canal's loading chute over 200 ft above the canal banks,\n\n### Room Run Railroad\nThe [Room Run Railroad](https://bliptext.com/articles/room-run-railroad) was a short rail line road built by Josiah White from a ravine in the Nesquehoning Valley\n\n## Non-railroad companies\nDuring 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.\nThe 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nWhite 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.\nLehigh Coal & Navigation Company 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.\n\"The state rejected this idea also, and in 1827 to build a canal along the Delaware River as part of the state canal system. It was to link Easton with Bristol, a length of 60 mi, and would have 24 lift locks to accommodate the elevation differential of 180 ft.\nThe state canal was a case of blatant political corruption.\nBadly designed, and poorly built, with narrow 11 ft that soon proved to be a serious limitation on boats using both canals, and did not even have provision for an adequate supply of water\"\n\n### Mill Parks\nFounders White and Hazard were at first, mill and foundry owners acting decisively to secure fuel for their main businesses prior to 1815's application for [right-of-way](https://bliptext.com/articles/right-of-way-property-access) legislation and optioning the sad-sack LCMC operations.\nIn 1814, the partners had actually invested first in the rival [Schuylkill Canal](https://bliptext.com/articles/schuylkill-canal) where they'd become disgusted with the planning, funding, and lack of commitment by other board members—their concerns take on added weight given the Schuylkill didn't operate until 1823 when the company blazed the way.\nWhite's innovative Bear Trap lock-gate and system was based on creating a triggerable artificial flood, depending upon water flow to float the boats past the rapids obstructions.\nIt is little wonder that as he surveyed the Lehigh, he also made note where a water-powered mill could be harnessed, and the legislative act would effectively give the LNC ownership of the entire river.\nThese rights were not released back to Pennsylvania until 1964.\nSo once 'emergency' improvements on the canal used its founder's knowledge and experience on the [Little Schuylkill River](https://bliptext.com/articles/little-schuylkill-river) to develop the waterpower sites along its waterways into early industrial parks.\nBy 1840, the Abbott Street area near Lock 47, now part of [Hugh Moore Park](https://bliptext.com/articles/national-canal-museum) in [Easton, Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/easton-pennsylvania), employed over 1,000 men in almost a dozen factories.\nThis fostered the industries of Allentown, Bethlehem, and their products and the connection with the [Delaware Canal](https://bliptext.com/articles/delaware-canal), managed for the state by the company after 1834