Rahn Township, Pennsylvania was a former

Pennsylvania township Under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a township is the lowest level of municipal incorporation of government. All of Pennsylvania's communities outside of incorporated cities, boroughs, and one town has been incorporated into a to ...

created from the lightly populated former Penn Township of Schuylkill County, in

Eastern Pennsylvania The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the nor ...

. Rahn Township was in existence from 1788–1971 and was the governmental body of the less populated lands between today's

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

s of Tamaqua and Coaldale, and Bull Run now absorbed by their growth. At the time in the years 1820 onwards, 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 ...

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

deposits were being first exploited by the

Lehigh Coal Mine Company Lehigh may refer to: Places United States * Lehigh, Iowa *Lehigh, Kansas * Lehigh, Oklahoma * Lehigh, Barbour County, West Virginia *Lehigh, Wisconsin *Lehigh Acres, Florida *Lehigh Township (disambiguation) *Lehigh Valley, a region in eastern Pe ...

(e.1793, d.1822) and its successor

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 ...

(1818), the sections of lands of Penn Township that would become the future Rahn Township along the Carbon County border was the mining camp that would grow to become

Summit Hill, Pennsylvania Summit Hill is a borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 3,034 at the 2010 census. Summit Hill has a storied history as the western terminus of the United Stat ...

, where the early coal pits exploited were at and around the peak called Sharpe Mountain of

Pisgah Ridge The name Pisgah may refer to: *Mount Pisgah (Bible) Places In the United States Communities *Pisgah, Alabama, a town * Pisgah, Georgia, an unincorporated community *Pisgah, Iowa, a city * Pisgah, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Pisgah, Ken ...

—the place where hunter Phillip Ginter had discovered the deposits in 1791. Sharpe Mountain today is a depression, as the LC&N Co. mined that place until well into the 1840s before they had to retreat down hill and drive shaft mines at Coaldale and Lansford.

References

{{authority control Former townships in Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania Populated places disestablished in 1971