Mauch Chunk, Carbon County, Pennsylvania in the 1820s

Work

Coal rules the day

The defining labor is getting anthracite from surface quarrying at Summit Hill⁴ to water at Mauch Chunk on the Lehigh^4,3. By 1827 that work runs through a railroad built from the mines to town^4,3, with trains of six to fourteen loaded cars⁴ coming down by gravity.

Law & power

A company town before borough

Formal borough government has not arrived: Mauch Chunk is not incorporated until 1850^6,7. In practice the largest local power is the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company⁴, backed by capital, land, engineering, and control of transport.

Money

Anthracite becomes marketable

The company’s first big shipment, 365 tons in 1820⁴, was hard to sell at $8.40 a ton⁴. Demand changes quickly: more than 28,000 tons⁴ go down the Lehigh in 1825.

What people feared

River and machinery

Before the canal, the Lehigh is swift, rocky, shallow, and flood-prone¹, and boats can be caught in rapids or wrecked. The new railroad depends on men regulating the speed of loaded cars descending by gravity⁴.

Home & table

Small, growing, undocumented

The town is still small enough that a later reference gives only about 700 people in 1830⁵. For domestic life, the opened sources leave a gap: no street-by-street description of ordinary houses survives online here.

Who lived here

Labor drawn to improvements

The river and road works gathered what a county history called the largest private work force yet seen in the Pennsylvania wilderness, tied to Lehigh river improvements⁴ and the nine-mile route to Summit Hill^4,3. The sources opened here do not name the languages or origins of ordinary workers.

Roads & news

News follows coal routes

Movement runs downriver to Philadelphia: early boats made the trip one way, and boatmen walked back to Mauch Chunk⁴. After 1829 the new 46-mile route to Easton¹ gives the place a more regular connection to larger markets.

In the air

Internal improvement made visible

The local argument is practical: whether capital, engineering, and law can make coal and river navigation pay. That question is embodied in $200,000 of combined company capital⁴, artificial freshets⁴, and finally the canal begun in 1827^1,4.

Year by year

1. 1820Three hundred sixty-five tons of Lehigh coal reached Philadelphia from the Mauch Chunk trade and sold with difficulty. here⁴
2. 1822The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company secured its charter. here⁴
3. 1824The Lehigh coal trade passed 9,541 tons shipped by this route. here⁴
4. 1825The Erie Canal opened in New York, making canal building a national measure of progress and profit. the country
5. 1827The Lehigh Canal from Mauch Chunk to Easton was begun. here^1,4
6. 1827The Mauch Chunk Railroad began carrying coal downhill from Summit Hill to the Lehigh. here^4,3
7. 1828Andrew Jackson was elected president, a national political event that would have been discussed along market and postal routes. the country
8. 1829The Lehigh Navigation to Easton was completed with locks and canal sections for two-way traffic. here¹

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Mauch Chunk was not in Carbon County in the 1820s; Carbon County was created on March 13, 1843, from parts of Northampton and Monroe counties. from the sources⁴
• The 1820s Mauch Chunk site was the coal-shipping point on the Lehigh River below the Summit Hill mines, nine miles away. from the sources^4,3
• A later Pennsylvania reference gives the population of the town of Mauch Chunk in 1830 as about 700. from the sources⁵
• The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company emerged from the merger of the Lehigh Navigation Company and Lehigh Coal Company and secured its charter on February 13, 1822. from the sources⁴
• Josiah White and Erskine Hazard were the leading figures behind the river improvements, coal transport, and the Mauch Chunk-to-Summit Hill works. from the sources^2,4
• The Lehigh Navigation Company and Lehigh Coal Company together began in 1818 with combined capital stock of $200,000. from the sources⁴
• In the early 1820s coal was sent downriver in square box-like arks, at first 16 to 18 feet wide and about 25 feet long. from the sources⁴
• The first 365 tons of Lehigh coal reached Philadelphia in 1820 and was difficult to sell at $8.40 a ton. from the sources⁴
• Coal shipments down the Lehigh rose from 1,073 tons in 1821 to 9,541 tons in 1824 and more than 28,000 tons in 1825. from the sources⁴
• Before the canal, White’s Lehigh improvements near Mauch Chunk used wing dams, sluice gates, and artificial freshets to float boats downstream. from the sources⁴
• The Lehigh River was too swift, rocky, shallow, and flood-prone for reliable ordinary two-way navigation before the navigation works. from the sources¹
• Construction of the Lehigh Canal from Mauch Chunk to Easton began in 1827 and was completed in 1829. from the sources^1,4
• The completed Lehigh Navigation from Mauch Chunk to Easton was a 46-mile route with 48 lift locks, 60 feet wide at the top, 45 feet at the bottom, and 5 feet deep. from the sources¹
• During the summer of 1827 a railroad was built from the Summit Hill mines to Mauch Chunk along much of the old wagon-road route. from the sources^4,3
• The Mauch Chunk Railroad was nine miles long and used gravity to descend nearly 1,000 feet from Summit Hill to the river landing. from the sources^2,4
• Loaded railroad cars each carried about one and a half tons; trains of six to fourteen cars descended in about 30 minutes, while the mule return to the mines took about three hours. from the sources⁴
• The railroad used rolled bar-iron rails three-eighths of an inch thick and one and a half inches wide, laid on wooden ties held by stone ballast. from the sources⁴
• At Summit Hill the coal lay close to the surface and was quarried in the open until underground work replaced quarrying about 1844. from the sources⁴
• The men who ran the one-way coal boats to Philadelphia walked back to Mauch Chunk for several years. from the sources⁴
• The one-way arks were broken up in Philadelphia, their planks sold as lumber, while ironwork was returned to Mauch Chunk by land, about 80 miles. from the sources⁴
• In 1827 the surrounding township of Mauch Chunk was organized, mostly from East Penn Township and partly from Lausanne Township. from the sources⁶
• Mauch Chunk was not incorporated as a borough until 1850, so in the 1820s it was a company-centered village and township place rather than a borough government. from the sources^6,7
• No reliable online source opened here gives a street-by-street description of ordinary houses in Mauch Chunk during the 1820s. not known
• No local church, school, or newspaper for Mauch Chunk in the 1820s is clearly documented in the sources opened here. not known

Sources

1. Lehigh River Watershed Explorations: The Canal. Lehigh Environmental Initiative, Lehigh University, 2011
2. The “Switzerland of America” – Ephemera from the Switchback Railway. National Canal Museum, 2021
3. Mt. Pisgah Plane. Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, 2009
4. History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania, Part 6. LDS Genealogy transcription of Fred Brenckman, History of Carbon County, 1913
5. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Internet Archive scan
6. History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania, Part 20. LDS Genealogy transcription of Fred Brenckman, History of Carbon County, 1913
7. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: Mauch Chunk. Wikisource, 1911

Mauch Chunk in other decades

Nearby, about the same time