The Hauto Tunnel, dug in 1871–72, was a single-track

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

tunnel crossing under the

barrier ridge The terms barrier ridge, a term of art in the earth sciences, especially geology and sometimes barrier range (more common as a geography term) describing the existence of gross landforms describing long ridgelines which are particularly difficult ...

Nesquehoning Mountain Nesquehoning MountainUSGS Geographic Names Information System
s ...

between

Lansford, Pennsylvania Lansford is a county-border borough (town) in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is located northwest of Allentown and 19 miles south of Hazleton in the Panther Creek Valley about from Philadelphia and abu ...

, in the

Panther Creek Valley In Eastern Pennsylvania, the valley of the Panther Creek tributary of the Little Schuylkill River, a very small and relatively short mountain creek, was historically important due to its stranglehold on energy production, a key region central to ...

and the

Central Railroad of New Jersey The Central Railroad of New Jersey, also known as the Jersey Central or Jersey Central Lines , was a Class I railroad with origins in the 1830s. It was absorbed into Conrail in April 1976 along with several other prominent bankrupt railroads of ...

trackage near the dam of the Hauto Reservoir impoundment about above

Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania Nesquehoning is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 3,336 at the 2020 census. Nesquehoning was established as a result of the nthracite coal mining industry. It w ...

. The tunnel was significant for cutting nearly off the trip to the

Lehigh Canal The Lehigh Canal, or the Lehigh Navigation Canal, is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The low ...

terminal or, by rail, to other eastern coal companies, in the era when

anthracite Anthracite, also known as hard coal, and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the hig ...

was the king of energy fuels. Built as a joint venture by the

and landlords

Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and i ...

(LC&N Co.) shortly after the LC&N

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

had decided to opt out of the rail transportation business and leased all the railroads it owned or controlled under subsidiary

Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad The Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad is a defunct railroad that operated in eastern Pennsylvania during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The company was a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N), but for much of its lifeti ...

to the CNJ. The tunnel began as a notion when LC&N Co. miners needed to drain water from a higher mine gallery under the Panther Creek Valley and so dug a drainage shaft from the other (north) side of Nesquehoning Ridge into the coal beds under Lansford. Once the tracks were in operation and proven, the tunnel allowed the CNJ to seek permission from LC&N Co. to cease coal shipments to the canal head on the iconic

Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad The Mauch Chunk and Summit Railroad was a coal-hauling railroad in the mountains of Pennsylvania that operated between 1828 and 1932. It was the first operational railway, in the United States, of any substantial length to carry paying passenger ...

, and to sell off the asset as a common carrier and tourist railway.Drury, John H. & Gilbert, Joan, Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk), Arcadia Publishing, 2001, p. 44

Notes

References

{{coord, 40.8394, -75.8893, type:landmark_region:US-PA_dim:3000, format=dms, display=title History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels in Pennsylvania Central Railroad of New Jersey Transportation buildings and structures in Carbon County, Pennsylvania

See also

Notes

References