Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, was established on the Lehigh River as a shipping depot for anthracite coal in 1818 by Josiah White, a Philadelphia Quaker and brilliant engineer, and his trusted business partner, Erskine Hazard.
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By 1829, White and Hazard had founded the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and built an efficient transportation system that moved coal nine miles over the mountains to Mauch Chunk by Switchback Gravity Railroad, and forty-six miles along the Lehigh Canal to Easton.
Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, was established on the Lehigh River as a shipping depot for anthracite coal in 1818 by Josiah White, a Philadelphia Quaker and brilliant engineer, and his trusted business partner, Erskine Hazard