Lehigh River

“ The mills are all going, and the logs, which a few months before were the supporters of broad and leafy tops, are now in the act of being split asunder. The boards are then launched into the stream, and rafts are formed of them for market.
During the summer and autumnal months, the Lehigh, a small river of itself, soon becomes extremely shallow, and to float the rafts would prove impossible, had not art managed to provide a supply of water for this express purpose. At the breast of the lower dam is a curiously constructed lock, which is opened at the approach of the rafts. ”

“ The northwestern valley begins at Rondout on the Hudson, crosses New York State to Port Jervis, where the Delaware, coming from the northwest, turns to the southeast into it, occupying it for thirty miles to Bushkill, and then the valley continues past Stroudsburg, just above the Water Gap, to the Lehigh River at Weissport, below Mauch Chunk. ”

“ Within the gorge of the Broad Mountain is the oddest town on the Lehigh, Mauch Chunk. 233
This noted coal town has two principal streets—one laid along the front of a mountain wall above the river bank, and the other at right angles, stretching back through a cleft in the mountain. Most things are set on edge in Mauch Chunk, and the man who may have the front door of his house on the street often goes out of an upper story into the back yard, which slopes steeply upward. Mount Pisgah rises high above, crowned with the chimneys of the machine-house of an inclined-plane railway. ”

“ In the Minisink country it was known as Minisinks River, or "River of the Minisinks." At the Lehigh junction the main stream was called the East Branch and the Lehigh the West Branch (Sauthier's map) , but above that point the main stream was known as the West Branch to its head in Utsyantha [FN-1] Lake, on the north-east line of Delaware County, N. Y., where it was known as the Mohawk's Branch. It forms the southwestern boundary of the State from nearly its head to Port Jervis, Orange County, Where it enters or becomes the western boundary of New Jersey. ”

“ In the mean time, each State appropriated to itself as much of the waters of the river as suited its purpose. In 1827 and 1828, Pennsylvania diverted the River Lehigh, a confluent of the Delaware, and afterwards, finding that stream insufficient, took additional feeders for her canal, out of the main stream of the Delaware. On the 4th February, 1830, the legislature of New Jersey passed the act under which the defendants were incorporated, and in pursuance of which, they have constructed the dam and feeder, the subject of the present suit. ”

“ A large part of the lowlands along the river are occupied by the extensive works of the Bethlehem Steel Company, where the big guns, armor and crank-shafts are made for the navy, while on the slopes of the South Mountain are the noble buildings of the Lehigh University, the munificent benefaction of Asa Packer, supporting four hundred students of the technical studies developing mining and railways. On the hill slopes of the northern river bank is the original Moravian town, oddly built of bricks and stone, with a steep slate roof on nearly every house. ”

“ MAUCH CHUNK AND COAL MINING.
The Lehigh above Bethlehem comes through the clear-cut "Lehigh Gap" in the Blue Ridge, which stretches off to the northeast, where are two other notches, one cut partly down and the other deeply cut—the first being the "Wind Gap" and the other the "Delaware Water Gap." The Indians used to tell the early pioneers that the wind came through the one and the water through the other. The Jordan Creek flows out from the South Mountain, and in the valley is Allentown, the chief city of the Lehigh, 232 having thirty thousand people, and numerous factories and breweries. ”

“ After leaving M‘Keansburg we passed valleys and mountains, and reached, in this manner, the narrow and romantic valley of the Lehigh, by a very steep road. Lehighton, which lies at a junction of Mahoning creek and the Lehigh, consists of but few houses, and is supported in a miserable manner; because the land is too hilly and rough for cultivation, and the industrious village of Mauch Chunk, which is but three miles distant, withdraws from it all support. ”

“ In the vicinity of the Lehigh, there are many limestone rocks; these they explode, partly for the purpose of having heavy stones, which are thrown on the dams, partly for burning them to lime. The burned lime is not only used for building, but also as manure for the fields.
We returned from the locks to Bethlehem by another road; on account of their distance from the coal pits, these locks are called the thirty-seven mile locks. We passed through a well cultivated valley, wherein is situated a place called Butstown, settled by Germans, and consisting of a few neat brick buildings. ”

“ The higher hills are crowned with forest trees, the lower ofttimes checkered with brown fields, recently planted, and rows of vines trimmed low to stakes, as in the fashion of the Rhine. The stream, though still majestic in its sweep, is henceforth a commercial slack-water, lined with noisy, grimy, matter-of-fact manufacturing towns, for the most part literally abutting one upon the other all of the way down to Pittsburg, and fast defiling the once picturesque banks with the gruesome offal of coal mines and iron plants. Surprising is the density of settlement along the river. ”

“ Although the loess, when traced from the valley of the Rhine into that of the Neckar, or into any other of its tributaries, often undergoes some slight alteration in its character, yet there is so much identity of composition as to suggest the idea, that the mud of the main river passed far up the tributary valleys, just as that of the Mississippi, during floods, flows far up the Ohio, carrying its mud with it into the basin of that river. But the uniformity of colour and mineral composition does not extend indefinitely into the higher parts of every basin. ”

“ The extraordinarily level crest of the mountain preserves record of the Cretaceous baselevel lowland; since the elevation of this ancient lowland, its softer rocks have, as it were, been etched out, leaving the harder ones in relief; thus the present valley-lowland is to be explained. In consequence of the still later elevation of less amount, the Delaware has cut a trench in the present lowland, which is partly seen to the left in the sketch. Fig. 5 is a general view of the Lehigh plateau and cañon, looking south from Bald Mountain just above Penn Haven Junction. ”

“ In Lebanon County a similar custom is found. One of my acquaintances living in a small town says that they celebrate Halloween roughly,—hanging beets and cabbages at the doors, moving steps, taking gates from hinges, throwing corn. The speaker was born [406] in Lehigh County, where nothing of this prevailed, and this fact constitutes one of the chief distinctions among our Pennsylvania Germans of Lancaster and Lebanon on one hand, and Lehigh, Berks, upper Montgomery, and probably Northampton on the other. ”

“ The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company has no railroad of its own reaching the city of Philadelphia, but transports coal and other merchandise, and sometimes passengers, from Mauch Chunk and other points in Pennsylvania over its own line to Phillipsburg, in the state of New Jersey, from which point it is carried upon the Belvidere and Delaware Railroad to Trenton, and thence by the Pennsylvania Railroad lines to the city of Philadelphia. ”

“ Leaving Stenton’s, after the loss of one of their number, the Indians crossed the Lehigh, and on their way to a store and tavern on the Copley creek, (where they also had been wronged by the whites,) they murdered several families residing within the limits of the present Whitehall township, Lehigh County. Laden with plunder, they then struck for the wilderness north of the Blue Mountain. Upwards of twenty settlers were killed or captured on that memorable day, and the buildings on several farms were laid in ashes. ”

“ Present outward drainage of the Anthracite basins.—The Lehigh, like the Susquehanna, made an attempt to capture the headwaters of adjacent streams, but failed to acquire much territory from the Anthracite because the Carboniferous sandstones spread out between the two in a broad plateau of hard rocks, across which the divide made little movement. The plateau area that its upper branches drain is, I think, the conquest of a later cycle of growth. ”

“ The great Atlantic Coast rivers rise among these mountain ridges, break through the Kittatinny and flow down to the ocean, while the streams on their western slopes drain into the Mississippi Valley. The Hudson breaks through the Kittatinny outcrop at the West Point Highlands, the Delaware forces a passage at the Water Gap, the Lehigh at the Lehigh Gap, below Mauch Chunk; the Schuylkill at Port Clinton, the Susquehanna at Dauphin, above Harrisburg, and the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. ”

“ For many years prior to June 21, 1880, the Lehigh Water Company, a corporation organized under the laws of Pennsylvania, by the purchase at judicial sale of the rights, powers, privileges, and franchises of the West Ward Company, also a Pennsylvania corporation, maintained a system of waterworks whereby the inhabitants of the borough of Easton, in that commonwealth, were supplied with water for domestic and business purposes. ”

“ When the ice-sheet had been pushed back north of the water-shed which separates the streams that flow into Lake Erie from those that flow into the Ohio River, the water that came from the melting of the ice was held between the front of the retreating ice and the ridge of the land. Thus in the valleys of the Cuyahoga, Sandusky, Maumee, and other north-flowing rivers, triangular lakes were formed with their bases resting against the ice-wall, and narrowing and shallowing back to the water-shed, where they found outlets in south-flowing rivers. ”

“ We were henceforth to walk in the company of great rivers: the Susquehanna, like some epic goddess, was to lead us to the Lehigh; the Blue Mountains were to bring us to the Delaware; and the uplands of Sullivan County were to bring us to—the lordly gates of the Hudson.
Our chests expanded as imagination luxuriated in the pictures it made. ”

“ Along the valley, bare sandy and boggy plains alternated with tea-tree thickets and mangrove swamps, in one of which our horses got deeply bogged. After five miles we came on a large piece of salt water, which, according to Brown, was a tributary creek of the river. It flowed between low banks fringed with tea-trees. We followed a foot-path of the natives, who seemed very numerous, which led towards another range west by south; and crossed several tea-tree creeks, Pandanus groves, and swamps full of a high blady grass. ”

“ It is equally clear that the law of the state to which the constitution refers in that clause must be one enacted after the making of the contract, the obligation of which is claimed to be impaired. Neither the Lehigh Water Company nor its predecessor had, under any statute enacted prior to 1874, an exclusive right to maintain water-works in the borough of Easton for supplying its inhabitants with water. ”

“ Mr. Lewis divides the surface formations of southeastern Pennsylvania into five clays and four gravels, of which nine deposits the Trenton gravel, as he calls the implement-bearing formation, is, except the recent alluvium, the most recent. At Philadelphia it is called the river-gravel and sand, and contains pebbles which are made exclusively from the rocks forming the upper valley of the Delaware River, and which have the flat shape characteristic of all true river-gravels. It is confined to the immediate vicinity of the river, and has been traced as far up as the Water-Gap. ”

“ REMINISCENCES. O’er Lake Erie’s dark, deep waters,—across Ohio’s broad, rich lands, and still onward, among the graceful forest trees, gushing springs, and fertile plains of Kentucky, rests in quiet beauty, the shady hillside, bright green valley, and dancing waterbrook, known as Glen’s Creek. No stately spire or glittering dome point out the spot to the passing traveller, but under the shadow of the lofty trees stands a large brick edifice, which has been consecrated to the worship of God. ”

“ The provisional system of ancient consequent drainage, illustrated on fig. 21, does appear to be sufficiently related to the streams of to-day to warrant the belief that most of our rivers took their first courses between the primitive folds of our mountains, and that from that distant time to the present the changes they have suffered are due to their own interaction—to their own mutual adjustment more than to any other cause. The Susquehanna, Schuylkill, Lehigh and Delaware are compound, composite and highly complex rivers, of repeated mature adjustment. ”

“ Under this arrangement, therefore, I went forward, and, following the creek, it was found to sweep to the eastward, round a high plain of rich black soil, and covered with luxuriant vegetation. This plain is basaltic, but, in the valley of the creek, sandstone crops out below it. The slopes from the plain to the creek are steep, and torn by deep gullies, which made travelling very fatiguing. As the creek again turned to the west and north-west, the water-holes increased both in size and number, although the flats within the valley were limited and intersected by watercourses. ”

“ At times the ravines are deep and the river tortuous, and again it meanders across the rich flat bottom lands of a broad valley. In its winding course among these mountain ranges, this renowned river passes through and displays almost the whole geological formation of Pennsylvania. The primary rocks are to the eastward of the Susquehanna, and the bituminous coal measures begin on the western Allegheny slope, so that the river cuts into a rock stratification over six miles in thickness, as one after another formation comes to the surface. ”