Young Jacob Cist was an intelligent and scientific man, and more familiar with mercantile and literary attainments than the original and practical knowledge required for the development of a new and savage region.
The late Hon. Charles Miner was too well and favorably known at home to need eulogy at our hands. He represented old Luzern, then embracing all Northeastern Pennsylvania, in the Legislature, and subsequently Lan caster, Chester, and Delaware Counties in Congress. He published the "Gleaner," and the "Village Record," for a long period, and was a forci ble, ready, and practical writer, the author of the History of Wyoming, and other works and papers of importance to the history of our country and times.
He wrote the first essays on the development of the anthracite coal-fields, and presented in detail many of the public improvements which have since been erected as a monument to his foresight and practical sagacity. It is remarkable, also, that he recommended a railway from Wilkesbarre to the Lehigh as early as December, 1813, before railroads existed, and when not one in a thousand could know what a railway was.
But Mr. Miner was not the only man deserving the notice of the histo rian, in connection with the development of our coal-fields. Josiah White and others have left practical monuments of utility, but none, like Miner, have left their thoughts and actions so publicly recorded : we will, there fore, be excused if we seem partial, and plead the want of time and space for further personal remarks.
In 1820 the navigation of the Lehigh was so far improved as to admit the descent of arks with comparative safety, and during that year 365 tons of coal were shipped to Philadelphia, and sold at $8.50 per ton; and from this time the Lehigh coal trade has been steadily on the increase. During 1864 it amounted to nearly 2,000,000 tons. The 365 tons, or one ton a
day, of 1820, heads the statistical column of the anthracite, or we may say the American coal trade.
In 1832 the Lehigh navigation was further improved from the primitive wing dams and sluices, which admitted the passage of loaded arks, but not their return, to a slack-water navigation, with locks and dams. In its pre sent condition the canal its 48 miles long, 45 to 50 feet wide at the bottom, 60 to 100 at the top, and six feet deep. The locks are 22 feet wide and 102 feet long. The total cost of canal and fixtures to 1864 is $4,455,000. The amount of coal transported during the same year was 847,123 tons, and the total amount from the commencement of the trade in 1820 was 20,000,000 tons by canal.
Previous to the year 1847 the Lehigh Company obtained all the coal which they sent to market from their great open quarry on the Mauch Chunk Mountain at Summit Hill, and on the identical spot where the "stone-coal" had been discovered by Philip Ginter.
This celebrated quarry has been an object of great curiosity to thousands. It was a scene not presented by any of the mining districts of the world ; for here a single vein of coal reached the enormous maximum thickness of seventy feet, or equal to the workable thickness of the entire formations of the richest coal-fields of the Old World.
Here the coal was not mined in the ordinary manner, but quarried in the daylight from an uncovered face of coal that would average 50 feet in perpendicular height. This quarry has been abandoned since 1847. The excavation or place formerly occupied by the quarry will cover an area of 30 or 40 acres, and the amount of coal shipped from the quarry probably exceeds 2,000,000 tons. In 1840 the amount excavated was 30 acres, or 1,100,000 tons.