Rittenhouse Gap is the name of a village in Longswamp Township in

Berks County, Pennsylvania Berks County ( Pennsylvania German: ''Barricks Kaundi'') is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 428,849. The county seat is Reading. The Schuylkill River, a tributary of the Delaware Ri ...

, United States, situated at . The gap which gives the town its name lies between the headwaters of Swabia Creek, in the Lehigh River watershed, and an unnamed tributary of the

Perkiomen Creek Perkiomen Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Schuylkill River in Berks, Lehigh and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania.Gertler, Ed ...

, in the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It f ...

watershed. Gap Hill lies along its northwestern side. The village is located at the northeastern end of the gap, around the source of Swabia Creek. The Catasauqua and Fogelsville Railroad was extended to the village in 1865, to carry

magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula Fe2+Fe3+2O4. It is one of the oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized to become a permanent magnet itself. With th ...

from the mines in the vicinity, largely owned by the Thomas Iron Company. These mines were among those selected by

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

for experiments in magnetic

beneficiation In the mining industry or extractive metallurgy, beneficiation is any process that improves (benefits) the economic value of the ore by removing the gangue minerals, which results in a higher grade product ( ore concentrate) and a waste stream (ta ...

of iron ore, by which he hoped to make iron mining in the Northeastern United States cost effective. The availability of cheap

Mesabi Range The Mesabi Iron Range is a mining district in northeastern Minnesota following an elongate trend containing large deposits of iron ore. It is the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota ...

ore defeated his plans, and the mines and railroad were abandoned after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The geological origins of the deposits have been the subject of recent research. With the closing of the iron mines, the community lost its principal support. It now lies at the head of the

Bear Creek Mountain Resort Bear Creek is a ski resort near the borough of Macungie, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. The resort opened in 1967 and was known as the Doe Mountain until 1999. It is a year-round resort on more than that features a va ...

and uses the Macungie zip code of 18062.

External links

Geology of Rittenhouse Gap iron deposits

References

Unincorporated communities in Berks County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania {{BerksCountyPA-geo-stub