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.
The company ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first vertically integrated company in the United States.Archer B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce, A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway , Vol. 21, The Chronicles of America Series. Editor: Allen Johnson (1921)
History 18th century
In 1791, a hunter named Philip Ginter discovered anthracite coal on Pisgah Mountain near present-day Summit Hill, Pennsylvania close to the border Schuylkill and Carbon counties.
To verify this discovery, Philip Ginder, often called Ginter, gave it to Col. Weiss the very next day. Col. Weiss said he would give Mr. Ginder 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land if he showed where the coal was found, and Mr. Ginder agreed to the deal. Col. Weiss took the specimen by horseback to Philadelphia and had it further inspected by John Nicholson, Michael Hillegas, and brother-in-law Charlie Cist. Upon authentication, Weiss was authorized to grant Ginter what he propositioned for his discovery upon pointing out the exact location where it was found. Ginter built a mill on the tract of land he acquired but was later deprived of it by the owner who had filed a prior claim at the US patent office.
In 1792, Weiss, Hillegas, and Nicholson were some of the original investors in the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LCMC). However, management proved inadequate and attempted to operate in an absentee manner. Company 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, which required cutting down trees and building crude arks near Lausanne Landing and then shooting the Lehigh River's rapids, hoping to reach the river's confluence with the Delaware River at Easton on the Pennsylvania border with New Jersey. The Lehigh Coal Mining Company was sporadically successfully in mining and transporting anthracite coal to 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.
Lehigh Coal Mine Company In 1792, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was first funded by Michael Hillegas, Jacob Weiss, and John Nicholson., 627 pages (pdf) It was incorporated the following year, in 1793, and the company also acquired in and around Panther Creek Valley and Pisgah Mountain, and the aim of hauling anthracite coal 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 nine miles from the Lehigh River 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 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.Brenckman's History of Carbon County, pp. 594: The task which Josiah White and Erskine Hazard undertook, that of making the Lehigh a navigable stream, was one which had before been several times attempted, and as often abandoned as too expensive and difficult to be successfully carried out. The Legislature was early aware of the importance of the navigation of this stream, and in 1771 passed a law for its improvement. Subsequent laws for the same object were enacted in 1791, 1794, 1798, 1810, 1814, and 1816, and a company had been formed under one of them which expended upwards of thirty thousand dollars in clearing out channels, one of which they attempted to make through the ledges of slate about seven miles above Allentown, though they soon relinquished the work.
The owners later sold some coal to Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill foundry at the Schuylkill River falls near Philadelphia.John P. Miller, 1979. The Lehigh Canal: A Thumb Nail History, 1829–1931. The Author. 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 River.
19th century
In 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 navigation on the Lehigh River as a key step.Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; 1864. pp. 330–.
In 1818 two companies were founded by Erskine Hazard, Josiah White, and George F. A. Hauto: the Lehigh Navigation Company (incorporated March 20, 1818), and the Lehigh Coal Company (incorporated October 21, 1818), for the purposes of constructing the Lehigh Canal and mining coal on the LCMC's land. Two years later on April 21, 1820 the two companies were consolidated under the title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, after Hazard and White had bought Hauto out of both companies. Founders Hazard and 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 (including mills already owned by Hazard and White themselves). Its 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 in the United States.
The 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. The Lehigh Canal played a hugely influential role in the nation's ability to transport anthracite coal, a primary energy source at the time, to the company's primary markets in the Northeastern United States. By the early 1830s, the Lehigh Canal and its bridges along the Delaware River inspired the development and connection of four other regional canals.
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's success, along with White's reputation for advancing the state of mining and civil engineering, jump started the Canal Age in the U.S. It also spurred historically significant investments in raw materials and bulk transportation infrastructure projects. The company also supported funding efforts behind the Schuylkill Canal project, which began in 1814, and was finally funded and finished with the company's support. 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 they explored property and feasibility examinations elsewhere in 1814–1815 and petitioned to build the canal that next year.<ref name=DEL&LHcanals> </ref> Upon 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.
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." 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 (steel cable) 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.
In 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. The transactions represented the first merger of interlocking companies in the nation's history. 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 in Quincy, Massachusetts.
The company was founded by industrialists Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, National Canal Museum – The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company Accessed 2008-09-18. who sought to improve delivery of coal to markets. and a German immigrant miner named Hauto.<ref name="EarOcorn">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.</ref>
The company is known in the 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 and was known as the "New Company" in the region.Per paid guide presentation in July 2013 at the Lansford-Coaldale 'Number Nine Museum' in the Panther Creek Valley.
Lehigh Coal Company White and Hazard very shortly found themselves on the receiving end of investor criticisms that the improvements and mining operation at Summit Hill were failing and were both considered crackpot schemes. The majority opinion was that improvements were possible, but that coal mining was less likely to succeed. They 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's navigation.
In 1817, they leased the Lehigh Coal Mine's properties and took over operations, incorporating it on October 21, 1818, as the Lehigh Coal Company. They 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. In 1820, White and Hazard bought out their partner Hauto and dissolved the Lehigh Coal Company on April 21, 1820.Ancestry.com, p593: "We will remark here that the Lehigh Coal Company was incorporated by act of Oct. 21, 1818; that its leading characters were the same as those of the Navigation, White, Hazard, and Hauto; that the last named was bought out by his partners in March, 1820, and that on April 21, 1820, the two companies were consolidated under the title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company."