News

In just a few months in 1827, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the 9.2 miles of America's first significant railroad using the road bed of the wagon road built in 1818–19. A gravity railroad, the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad, used wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate to bring coal from mines to the river more efficiently. The work went quickly since the right-of-way surveyed by White ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818.