The Lehigh Navigation, built by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, carried anthracite coal from mines in northeastern Pennsylvania to New York, Easton, Philadelphia, and beyond. Much of the canal was dug by hand, and workers built forty-nine locks to overcome a three hundred fifty-three-foot drop in elevation. Operations from Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, to Easton began in 1839, allowing coal-laden boats to travel down and empty boats to return along forty-six point two miles of canal wide enough for boats to pass each other, ending the earlier one-way trip. Made up of slackwater pools, five guard locks where the slackwater pools ended and the canal began, and forty-four lift locks, it became a busy waterway for transporting goods. At its peak in 1855, mule-drawn boats hauled more than one million tons of anthracite coal along the canal. In the late nineteenth century, railways became a faster and less expensive shipping method. The last coal load traveled south in 1932, and partial operation continued until 1942, when severe flooding ruined the locks and washed away most of the towpath. After lying empty and neglected for ten years, a group of local residents and contractors restored a three point five-mile section in Walnutport in 1952. Though it no longer carries coal, this transportation system shaped the communities along its banks and is now preserved as part of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
