Delaware and Lehigh Valleys Coal Iron Steel and Canals

The Coal Iron Steel and Canals of the Delaware and Lehigh Valleys

The Delaware & Lehigh five county region of Northeastern Pennsylvania developed in the late 18^th Century as a result of the anthracite mines, the iron and steel industries, and the canals built to reach Philadelphia .

Land People and History the Lenape of the Delaware Valley hunted deer, grew grains and vegetables, and caught seafood along the coast.  The Lehigh Valley was of great importance because it was one of their main east-west pathways, intersecting with major north-south aboriginal trails in the Delaware Valley. Despite its prominence as a crossroads, the Great Valley was the site of few permanent villages, although they often camped at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers in what is now Easton.

  

 

Delaware and Lehigh Valley Local Native Plant Gardens, Family fishing in New Hope and Bristol Amish Market 
The first Europeans in the Lehigh Valley were Scots-Irish who followed the Saucon and Indian creeks and established settlements in today’s Northampton County. Large numbers of Germans came into the Lehigh Valley in the 1730s.  Among them were the Schwenkfelders from Saxony and Mennonites, known for their skills as craftsmen and millers, and for establishing schools.  Most of the Germans became known as Pennsylvania Dutch and grew maize, squash, wheat and livestock. At least 50 different nations and ethnic groups have been identified among the immigrants of the 1800s; many arrived at Ellis Island and traveled straight to the Lehigh Valley. Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton thrived by the late 19^th Century.
The Delaware and Lehigh Valleys played a major role during the American Revolution. George Washington’s crossed the Delaware River in 1776, the second reading of Declaration of Independence was held in Easton and the Liberty Bell was hidden from the British here.

The Discovery of Anthracite in 1791, Carbon County set the stage for America’s Industrial Revolution, the founding of small towns, the birth of industrial powerhouses such as Bethlehem Steel and the development of the Lehigh and Delaware Canals. Also known as stone coal because of its rock-like hardness, it appeared atop hills and under valleys in seams or veins up to 12 feet thick. Industries involving iron, steel, Portland cement and zinc processing flourished, followed by tanneries, silk and textile mills. These raw materials led to commercial, transportation and cultural opportunities along a 165-mile route through the Wyoming, Lehigh and Delaware Valleys.

Planning Your Trip assumes uniquely local dimensions wherever you go; the activities that you, the visitor – local, or global –  select and irrespective of the length of your stay, are unique of the community you are visiting and rooted into the local economy, history and traditions.

TEMA develops personalized travel itineraries based on client interests by leveraging an in-depth knowledge of your destination, superior client service in the planning stages and throughout the trip or event as well as logistics expertise to reduce accommodations and transport costs and transfer times.

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Transportation and Communications the Lehigh River carved a trail that would eventually become the backbone of future transportation routes. Footpaths along the river banks gave way to canals, then to railroads, and finally to modern-day highways. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Lehigh Gap, a dramatic landscape where the Lehigh River breaks through Blue Mountain, also known as Kittatiny Ridge, the final ridge in the Appalachian chain. The Delaware Canal was built during the early 19^th Century from Easton to Bristol on the Delaware River fostering development of textile mills such as the Grundy complex, steel mills like the Fairless Works and planned suburban community like Levittown. Completion of the Lehigh Canal further accelerated development of the Valley.

The 1862 floods destroyed all the dams, locks and canal boats and coal shipping shifted to railroads.  The Lehigh Valley Railroad, which ran through Easton and on to New York City, was the first rail line to have a significant impact. The Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad and Reading & Pennsylvania Railroad created competition for shipping coal and other goods. The Delaware Canal was a transport link with limited industrial impact on the rural, farm region it flowed through.

Culture and The Environment in more recent times, the region has been in the forefront of land conservation, historic preservation and an arts movement that celebrates land and landscapes. The local culture draws from the Moravian settlements experience in which all men were equal, hence a unique and broad cultural environment in which music, art, education and religious tolerance flourished, as shown in the communal dwellings, churches and industrial structures in Bethlehem and Nazareth.

                                                 

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Missouri River Trails

Navigation Tributaries Watershed and People

The Missouri is the longest river in North America, rising in the Rocky Mountains and flowing east and south for 2,341 miles - 3,767 km - before connecting with the Mississippi north of St. Louis.

History for over 12 thousand years, people have depended on the Missouri River as a source of food and transportation as ten Native American groups have led a nomadic lifestyles along with the buffalo herds. In the late 17^th century, Spanish and French explorers reached the river which become part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase of the early 1800s. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark followed the Missouri on their 1803-06 journey to the Pacific Ocean.

Navigation boat travel on the Missouri started with wood-framed canoes and Native American bull boats. The first steamboat was the Independence, in 1819. By the 1830s, large mail and freight-carrying vessels were running regularly between Kansas City and St. Louis. Water transport increased through the 1850s with craft ferrying pioneers, emigrants and miners. Steamboat navigation peaked in 1858 with over 130 boats operating full-time on the Missouri.

Tributaries nearly 100 significant tributaries and hundreds of smaller ones feed the Missouri River. Most rivers and streams in the Missouri River basin flow from west to east, following the incline of the Great Plains; however, some eastern tributaries, such as the James River, flow from north to south. The largest by runoff are the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming, and the Platte in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska.

Upper and Lower the Upper River is north of Gavin Point Dam, the last of 15 hydroelectric dams upstream of Sioux City. The lower Missouri runs 840 miles meeting the Mississippi just above St. Louis.

The Watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to the border of the Arkansas River. This watershed is home to 12 million people in Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. The watershed's largest city is Denver; many northwestern cities, like Billings Montana, are among the fastest growing in the Missouri basin.

The Missouri Watershed includes 25 percent of Agricultural Land in the United States

The People archaeological evidence suggests that the first arrivals in the watershed of the Missouri River were between 10 and 12 thousand years ago, making the Missouri River one of the main migration paths that settled in the Ohio and the lower Mississippi River Valley.

Pioneers the river defined the American frontier in the 19^th century as the major trails that opened the American West started on the Missouri River.

The First Westward leg of the Pony Express was a Ferry across the Missouri River

 Most emigrants arrived at the eastern terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad via a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs and Omaha. In 1869, the Hannibal was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River near Kansas City, the largest city upstream from St. Louis.

Manifest Destiny over one half million people set out from the river town of Independence, Missouri to their various destinations in the American West from the 1830s to the 1860s. Covered wagons, known as prairie schooners, provided the primary means of transport until the beginning of regular boat service in side wheelers and sternwheelers in the 1850s. Over 80 percent of upstream passengers and freight hauled from the Midwest to Montana was transported by boat, a journey that took 150 days. Conflicts between natives and settlers over the opening of the Bozeman Trail in the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana resulted in Native American victory. However, the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, sparked when American miners discovered gold in the Black Hills, ended in relocation to reservations.

Missouri River Itineraries