This noted coal town has two principal streets—one laid along the front of a mountain wall above the river bank, and the other at right angles, stretching back through a cleft in the mountain. Most things are set on edge in Mauch Chunk, and the man who may have the front door of his house on the street often goes out of an upper story into the back yard, which slopes steeply upward. Mount Pisgah rises high above, crowned with the chimneys of the machine-house of an inclined-plane railway. A view from it discloses a novel landscape beneath, the railroads, canal, river and front street all being compressed together into the narrow curving gorge which bends around Bear Mountain, the "Mauch Chunk" over opposite. The red sandstone is universal, and the chocolate-colored roads leading out of town are carved into the mountain walls. Through the centre of the place the river pours over a canal dam, its roaring mingled with the noise of constantly moving coal trains. The curious conical Bear Mountain, around which everything curves, rises seven hundred feet high, and the town, which has about four thousand people, rests at various elevations, wherever houses can get room to stand—in gullies or gorges, or hanging on the hillsides. From every point of view rises the tall and quaintly turreted tower of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, looking like an ancient feudal castle of the Rhine, which was built as a memorial of Asa Packer by his widow; for here was his home, and his grave is in the cemetery almost over the roof of his house.
At Summit Hill, nine miles northwest of Mauch Chunk, the anthracite coal of this region was first discovered. Philip Ginter, a hunter, found it while roaming over Sharp Mountain in 1791. This "stone coal" was carried down to Philadelphia and exhibited, and a company was formed, taking up ten thousand acres on the mountain and opening a mine. For thirty years they had disappointments, as nobody would use the coal, which cost about $14 per ton to transport to Philadelphia. To cheapen this, efforts were made to improve the navigation of the Lehigh, out of which grew the canal which was the early route of the coal to that city. Asa Packer once said that in 1820 three hundred and eighty-five tons went to Philadelphia, and this choked the market. In 1827, when the mining at Summit Hill had got a good start, the "Switchback" gravity railroad was built to bring the coal out from the mines to the river at Mauch Chunk. The loaded coal cars ran by their own momentum nine miles down a grade of about ninety feet to the mile. To get the cars back, they were hauled up the inclined plane on Mount Pisgah, then run by gravity six miles inland to Mount Jefferson, where they were hauled up a second plane, and then they ran three miles farther by gravity to the mines. This route was used for many years, but was afterwards superseded by another railway, and now the famous "Switchback" is a summer excursion route for tourists who delight in the exhilarating rides down the gravity slopes. At Summit Hill and in the Panther Creek Valley, a large output of coal is mined and sent through a railway tunnel to the Lehigh, and there is at Summit Hill a burning mine which has been smouldering more than a half-century. Asa Packer developed this region, while, farther up the river, branch lines come in from the Mahanoy and Hazleton regions, which were the field of operations of Ario Pardee; and the two went hand in hand in fostering the prosperity of the Lehigh Valley.
Mauch Chunk
The upper waters of the Lehigh flow through a wild canyon, the river at times almost doubling upon itself as it makes sharp bends around the bold promontories. Enormous hills encompass it about, the stream often flowing through the bottom with the rush and foam of a miniature Niagara rapids. The canal, abandoned above Mauch Chunk, was destroyed by a freshet many years ago, but the amber-colored waters still pour over the dilapidated dams and through the moss-grown sluices. There are log houses for the lumbermen, also an almost obsolete industry, and finally the railways abandon the diminutive Lehigh and climb over the desolate Nescopec Mountain, to go through the Sugar Notch and down the other side into the Vale of Wyoming and to the banks of the Susquehanna. Upon the eastern slopes of the Nescopec the Lehigh has its sources, gathering the tribute of many small streams between this ridge and Broad Mountain.
THE VALE OF WYOMING.
The railroads cross the height of land between the sources of the Lehigh and the affluents of the Susquehanna, through the Sugar Notch, at about eighteen hundred feet elevation. When the train moves out to the western verge of Nescopec Mountain there suddenly bursts upon the gladdened sight the finest scenic view in Pennsylvania—over the fair Vale of Wyoming, with all its gorgeous beauties of towns and villages, forests and farms, under the bright sunlight, and having laid across it the distant silver streak of the glinting Susquehanna River, all spread out in a magnificent picture seen from an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the river level. For nearly twenty miles the Susquehanna can be traced through the long, trough-like valley, from where it breaks in through the Lackawannock Gap in the North Mountain, under Campbell's Ledge, far to the northward, away down south to where it passes out the narrow gorge at Nanticoke Gap. The long ridges of the Nescopec and Moosic Mountains enclose the valley on one side, and over on the other are the great North Mountain or Shawnee range, and the higher ridge of the main Allegheny range behind. In the distant northeast the view is prolonged up the Lackawanna Valley. In this splendid Wyoming Vale, spread out like a map, is a landscape of rich agriculture, dotted over with towns and villages, coal-breakers and huge culm-piles, the long snake-like streaks of railways crossing the scene bearing their little puffing engines. It looks much like what one sees out of a balloon. Here is the village of Nanticoke, then Plymouth, then the spreading city of Wilkesbarre, and, far beyond, the foliage-hidden houses of Pittston, near the gorge where the river flows in. Between them all are clusters of villages and black coal heaps, with myriads of the little green and brown fields, making distant farms. The river reaches sparkle in the light as the long shadows are cast from the mountains, and the train runs rapidly down the mountain side and across the valley to its chief city, Wilkesbarre.
When the broad and shallow and rock-strewn river Susquehanna, on its way down from Otsego Lake in New York to the Chesapeake, breaks through the North Mountain, its valley expands to three or four miles in width, making a fertile region between the high enclosing ridges which the Indians called Maughwauwama, or the "extensive flat plains." This sonorous name underwent many changes, finally becoming known as Wyoming. Luzerne County is the lower and Lackawanna County the upper portion of this noted valley, which is the greatest anthracite coal-field in the world. These Wyoming coal measures underlie seventy-seven square miles, having veins averaging eighty feet in thickness, and about eighty thousand tons to the acre, the aggregate deposit of coal being estimated to exceed two thousand millions of tons. The large population and enormous production have caused all the railways to send in branches to tap its lucrative traffic, so that it is the best-served region in Pennsylvania. It has two large cities—Wilkesbarre, in Luzerne, and Scranton, in Lackawanna. Wilkesbarre is on the eastern Susquehanna river bank, a town of forty thousand people, named after the two English champions of American Colonial rights. It covers much surface in the centre of the valley, with suburbs spreading far up the mountain sides. But from almost every point of view in the city the outlook is over black culm-heaps or coal-breakers or at rows of coal cars, so that there is a monotony in the steady reminder of the source of their riches, the omnipresent anthracite. About twelve miles northwest of Wilkesbarre, up in the North Mountain range, is the largest lake in Pennsylvania—Harvey's Lake—elevated nearly thirteen hundred feet and covering about two square miles. It is named after one of the early pioneers from Connecticut, and its outflow comes down to the Susquehanna near Nanticoke Gap. Its pleasant shores are a favorite resort of the Wilkesbarre people. The flourishing city of Scranton is about nineteen miles north of Wilkesbarre, in the Lackawanna Valley. It has grown to a population of a hundred thousand people, and is picturesquely situated among the coal mines, with a higher elevation than Wilkesbarre, being nearly eleven hundred feet above tide, at the confluence of the Roaring Brook with the Lackawanna River; and it has extensive iron industries, being the chief city of northeastern Pennsylvania. The Wyoming and Lackawanna coal pits, while the greatest anthracite producers, are not generally so deep as those of the Lehigh or Schuylkill regions. The deepest Pennsylvania shaft goes down seventeen hundred feet near Pottsville. Some of the Wyoming galleries run a mile and a half underground from the shaft, following the coal veins underneath and far beyond the Susquehanna.
This noted Wyoming Vale, in the early history of the Pennsylvania frontier, was bought from the Iroquois Indians, the "Six Nations," by an association of pioneer settlers from Connecticut. Good management, due largely to the judicious methods of the early missionaries, kept them at peace with the Indians. Count Zinzendorf, with a companion, came up from Bethlehem in 1742, before the Connecticut purchase, and founded a Moravian mission among the Shawnees in the valley. It is said that they were suspicious of European rapacity and plotted his assassination, and the historian relates that the Count was alone in his tent, reclining upon a bundle of dry weeds, destined for his bed, and engaged in writing or in devout meditation, when the assassins crept stealthily up. A blanket-curtain formed the door, and, gently raising the corner, the Indians had a full view of the patriarch, with the calmness of a saint upon his benignant features. They were struck with awe. But this was not all. The night was cool, and he had kindled a small fire. The historian continues: "Warmed by the flame, a large rattlesnake had crept from its covert, and, approaching the fire for its greater enjoyment, glided harmlessly over one of the legs of the holy man, whose thoughts at the moment were not occupied upon the grovelling things of earth. He perceived not the serpent, but the Indians, with breathless attention, had observed the whole movement of the poisonous reptile; and as they gazed upon the aspect and attitude of the Count, their enmity was immediately changed to reverence; and in the belief that their intended victim enjoyed the special protection of the Great Spirit, they desisted from their bloody purpose and retired. Thenceforward the Count was regarded by the Indians with the most profound veneration."