Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company

The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LCAN) (1988–2010) was an modern-day anthracite coal mining company headquartered in Pottsville, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, U.S. which acquired many of the 'Old Company' (LC&N) properties and re-launched the Lehigh Coal Companies brand in 1988. The LCAN ran strip mining operations in the Panther Creek Valley east of Lansford along U.S. Route 209; with vast properties dominating the coal areas of Tamaqua, Coaldale, and Lansford. These properties are largely the same real estate assets as were acquired in the Panther Creek Valley by the predecessors: the haphazard Lehigh Coal Mine Company (1792-1822) and the builders of the Lehigh Canal and first American blast furnaces, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (Old Company, LC&N), which spearheaded the U.S. Industrial revolution. The new company was incorporated in 1988 acquiring LC&N assets after bankruptcy proceedings, taking the name of the original.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a prominent coal mining and transportation infrastructure company first established in 1822 after four years of successfully delivering regular shipments of anthracite coal to the docks of Philadelphia via their pioneering Lehigh Canal. In the merger of "The Lehigh Coal Mining Company" and the "Lehigh Navigation Company", both of which operated in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania between 1818-1822, the lease on the land rights of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was ended with a subsidiary acquisition purchase by stock swap — and these lands once owned were used to open up the whole Northeastern Pennsylvania 1800s frontier area (Tamaqua, Coaldale}, Lansford, Summit Hill, Nesquehoning, and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania—among other company towns outside the 14 miles (23 km) long strip in which the LCAN 'New Company' operated.) The remaining 8,000-acre anthracite-rich tract between Jim Thorpe and Tamaqua originally owned by the Lehigh Coal Mine Company is arguably the richest vein of high quality anthracite known in the world with the possible exception of the valley floor deposits of the Wyoming Valley, but without a River above leaking into shafts, far easier to mine. Like most commercially feasible coal mines today in the USA, the ongoing mining operations use mountain top mining (strip mining) techniques.

...
Wikipedia