Carbon County, Pennsylvania
| Carbon County, Pennsylvania | |
|---|---|
Blue Mountain near Palmerton
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 Location in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania |
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 Pennsylvania's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | March 13, 1843 (Divided from Northampton County |
| Named for | Coal deposits |
| Seat | Jim Thorpe |
| Largest borough | Jim Thorpe |
| Area | |
| • Total | 387 sq mi (1,002 km2) |
| • Land | 381 sq mi (987 km2) |
| • Water | 5.9 sq mi (15 km2), 1.5% |
| Population (est.) | |
| • (2015) | 63,960 |
| • Density | 168/sq mi (65/km²) |
| Congressional districts | 11th, 17th |
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 |
| Website | carboncounty |
| Footnotes: | |
| Designated | June 13, 1982 |
Carbon County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 65,249. Its county seat is Jim Thorpe, founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk, a company town of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) as it built a wagon road nine miles to their coal mine at today's) Summit Hill, and constructed the Lehigh Canal navigations. In 1827, that wagon road became the nation's second operating railroad, the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad which is regarded as the world's first roller coaster, which became its main function between 1873-1931. The area around Mauch Chunk was known as the "Switzerland of America", the long wide slack water pool above the Lehigh's upper dam being surrounded by Mauch Chunk Ridge, Bear Mountain, Pisgah Ridge, Mount Pisgah, Nesquehoning Ridge, Broad Mountain and their various prominences and summits. Another railroad first, the first railway to operate steam locomotives as traction engines and prime movers in the United States was the Beaver Meadows Railroad, which connected from mines west of Beaver Meadows and Weatherly on the opposite side of Broad Mountain along a water path through the Lehigh Gorge at Penn Haven Junction (once supporting five railroads) to the Lehigh Canal opposite Lehighton, PA.
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