Lock No. 1, Lehigh Canal Upper Division

Lock No. 1, Lehigh Canal Upper Division.

"Nearly all [canal] boatmen kept going day and night, boats being so numerous that the canal seemed to be a solid mass of boats." , W.H. Gausler , Lehigh Canal Boat Operator (1840-1856)

, The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company's artificial waterway system along the Lehigh River was an early-19th-century engineering feat. Mauch Chunk (present-day Jim Thorpe) played a critical role as it marked the transition between the locks, dams, and impoundments of the Lehigh Canal's Upper Division (Mauch Chunk to White Haven) and the traditional canal that characterized the Lower Division (Mauch Chunk to Easton)., By 1820, coal boats were navigating the steep Lehigh River using Josiah White's inventive bear-trap lock and dam system. The bear-trap lock functioned by increasing the depth of the canal through small artificial floods that carried the loaded canal boats downstream. This allowed one man to open the lock gates within a few moments, whereas the previously long and cumbersome process of opening and shutting the lock gates required an entire work crew. Lock No. 1, constructed between 1827 to 1829, was the first of 29 locks of the canal's Upper Division. The lock measured approximately 22 feet × 100 feet and fit two canal boats in a single file. Roughly cut log timbers known as cribbing were laid in a ladder-like fashion on the downstream side of the lock piers. Boulders were overlaid on the cribbing and in cribbing hollows to prevent the filling in of the canal., Lock No. 1 operated until October 1931, after which time the canal and navigation system operations ceased due to the success and prevalence of the railroad. Remnants of the walls and wood cribbing of Lock No. 1 remain today., [Captions:] , Postcard showing canal boat on the Lehigh Canal through Mauch Chunk., Canal boats lined up along Lock No. 1 (shown to the right). The portion of the lock seen here was located south of the SR 903 bridge, near the present-day bridge, near the present-day water treatment facility., System Map showing the Lehigh Canal Upper Division from Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) to White Haven., Remnants of Lock No. 1 are located directly beneath the SR 903 Bridge, near the east bank of the Lehigh River.