Image: Catasauqua Creek watercourse in Catasaugua, PA+source+insert overall area in 2017-USGS

Description: Wider view of the Catasauqua Creek area, with a region area view as insert. Catasauqua and along Catasauqua Creek are where Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company built six of the first eight hot blast furnaces in the USA from 1839-40 (onwards) near their Lehigh Canal. Along with the their two cold blast furnaces built in Mauch Chunk (of the first four built in the US) the 'mere Coal and Railroad Company', produced many other technology developments that jump started the American Industrial Revolution and gave it an accelerated rate of growth with each feat accomplished. • First US operating railroad of any major length, 1st high volume US Coal Mines (production), taming the Lehigh River into the early (one way) Lehigh Canal, until 1856 repeatedly, reliably, delivering (new annual) record amounts of anthracite to energy starved Philadelphia (America's largest and most industrialized in 1820, est. population was just 35,000 people) and by transshipment from those Docks, other parts of the Eastern Seaboard. •  Inspiring dozens of other entrepenuers and investors to think outside the box, beginning with the dwadling management of the Schuylkill Canal to the many canals to follow 1820 accomplishments such as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company projects and other New Jersey, Delaware, and New York turnpikes, canals and railways that followed 1822-24, including the Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works and many US railroads to come. • The Josiah White and partner Erskine Hazard company(s) also pursued many research and developmental undertakings such as figuring out how to use hard-to-burn anthracite as a primary fuel (getting it to burn at all or stay burning were things requiring bottleneck knowledge), conducting years of experiments with iron smelting production attempts without coking, or sending an special envoy to as by then first successful operations in Wales producing coveted Anthracite iron (The holy grail for all efforts to produce iron by blast furnace then desired in all of Eastern Pennsylvania, and so sending an envoy with rank to the Yniscedwin iron-works, especially for negotiating to import a technology partner, Welsh Ironmaster David Thomas, called by his Welsh countrymen "the pioneer of the anthracite iron-trade in America,"1 with the principal (and his employer, George Crane) as a partner in founding the Lehigh Crane Iron Works (1839-1999) in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania — the first successful & regular producers of American Anthracite pig iron, which without needing the expensive coking processing and any additional transportation compared to cleaned anthracite processing changed the world as it was made to produce incredibly plentiful high quality wrought and cast iron available in industrial quantities, suitable for other processing and to be made into steel in puddling furnaces (or later Bessemer Converters. • The area was chosen for ease of fuel delivery personally by Josiah White and Erskine Hazard themselves (purchased 1838-39 winter/spring) who armed with much experience by 1839, immediately set men to work building infrastructure before David Thomas & Son walked into the new works or building-boom in the equally new town of Catasauqua.
Title: Catasauqua Creek watercourse in Catasaugua, PA+source+insert overall area in 2017-USGS
Credit: This image is in the public domain in the United States because it only contains materials that originally came from the United States Geological Survey, an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. For more information, see the official USGS copyright policy.
Author: FrankB
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