The Promise of Anthracite Coal

The Promise of Anthracite Coal. , Anthracite coal is almost pure carbon, has the highest energy content of any coal, and produces a hot, smokeless, long-lasting fire. Northeastern Pennsylvania is one of a handful of places in the world where it is found. Pennsylvania coal , particularly anthracite , almost completely displaced water, wood, and charcoal as America's favored energy source in the mid-19th century. This set the nation on course for an explosion of economic, industrial, and social changes that altered the landscape of the Corridor, the Commonwealth, and the entire United States., Anthracite was discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania in the late 18th century, but every attempt to move the coal from mine to market in large, profitable quantities failed. In 1818, White and Hazard bought up the leases of the bankrupt Lehigh Coal Mine Company in Summit Hill. They built a road from the mine to Mauch Chunk, then White found a way to tame the wild, shallow and rocky Lehigh River into a reliable transportation route.,

"The importance of coal in American industrialization cannot be overstated." , , Historian Walter Licht, in Industrializing America, 1995

, [Caption:] , Josiah White and Erskine Hazard re-opened the bankrupt Lehigh Coal Mine Company in Summit Hill, 10 miles west of Mauch Chunk, in 1818. Strip mining was practiced there, and coal was hauled by wagon to the Lehigh River.