Easton's Hugh Moore Park preserves a landscape of America's canal age, with more than two miles of restored Lehigh Canal, a canal boat attraction, and a major canal heritage museum in a 520-acre park between the Lehigh Canal and Lehigh River. It recalls the years when mules pulled canal boats along narrow towpaths across much of the United States east of the Mississippi River. The area was also shaped by industry: the Glendon Iron Company was established in 1842 by Boston businessman Charles Jackson, Jr., becoming the second anthracite iron furnace in the U.S., and in 1844 William Firmstone, an English iron master, put it into blast. Firmstone bought a site along Section 8 of the Lehigh Navigation so he could use canal water power to drive blowing engines, and after a second furnace was built in 1846, the works produced over 7,000 tons of iron that year. The site also appears in a section of nine hand drawn Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company maps dated 1864 that show the extension of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad under chief engineer John Leisenring.
