How it started
19th century
The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a prominent coal mining and transportation infrastructure company first established in 1822 after four years of successfully delivering regular shipments of anthracite coal to the docks of Philadelphia via their pioneering Lehigh Canal.
In the merger of The Lehigh Coal Mining Company and the Lehigh Navigation Company, both of which operated in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania between 1818 and 1822, the lease on the land rights of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was ended with a subsidiary acquisition purchase by stock swap, and these lands were used to open up the whole Northeastern Pennsylvania frontier in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Tamaqua, Coaldale, Lansford, Summit Hill, Nesquehoning, and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and other towns on the 14 miles (23 km) long strip in which the LCAN 'New Company' operated.
The remaining 8,000-acre anthracite-rich tract between Jim Thorpe and Tamaqua originally owned by the Lehigh Coal Mine Company is arguably the richest vein of high quality anthracite in the world with the possible exception of the valley floor deposits of the Wyoming Valley. Like most commercially feasible coal mines today in the U.S., the ongoing mining operations use mountain top mining techniques.
20th century
In the 1960s, LC&N ceased its operations. The coal lands were acquired by the Fazio Brothers.
From Wikipedia’s article on Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2