Show DISCOVERY OP OF COAL IT WAS YEARS HOWEVER BEFORE ITS VALUE WAS REALIZED the hip rip van von winkle of the old blaurl chunk regions mil ginter to in I 1 crol cret cited with kith tho the illi bian who th fir airi stumbled upon the billack Diani diamonds ond ask almost anybody up in the kennyl rania vania coal regions who first discovered the commodity and the answer will quickly come phi pah ginter even the grimy youngsters cra among the delvers under the ground have the story as pat as a royal flush it haa has been made onest their school studies e from time immemorial and its dollars to coal dust that tell yon you that phil ginter was their great gre at great great gmt grandfather or had some other connection with their family the story Is an interesting one what rip van winkle was to our grandfathers along the hudson phil ginter was to the hills bills forming the french root roof of the lehigh valley lie ile waa was a tramp of the mauch chunk region a lazy old dut dutchman h who would rather loaf than work C and who was fonder of his gun and dog than of cleanliness and sobriety one day in the year 1701 1791 phil had been out on one of his hunting expeditions and was returning home As usual most of his bunting had been done under a H tree where he had gone to sleep and endeavored to dream of choice coverts converts co verts he ile had lain there here t until it began to rain min and as the rain awakened him he rubbed his eyes swore at his ill luck and meandered homeward that rainstorm in the mountains that woke the old pennsylvania dutchman proved a godsend to him and to the world at large As he ambled homeward the rain became more furious and washed away large portions of earth picking his way through the mud and over fallen trees phil suddenly stumbled on some roots and as hadid co so be he displaced a number of black stones that had become uncovered by the washout va shout old phil had heard the legends of the existence of black stones that would burn in the mountains but he had never seen any of them and ho be and the older mountaineers mount alne e m looked upon it as a fairy story he ile was of an inquisitive turn of mind however and when he unearthed the stones he lie searched for more beneath the root of a fallen tree he dug up many efthem of them and he fiher his pockets with them and lugged them home colonel jacob weiss ws the oracle of that bailiwick ball wick at that time lie ile resided at allen fort alien now weissport Weis sport near by to mauch chunk on the following day ginter took his find to tho the colonel the colonel saw at a 9 glance lance that ginter bad ball made a valuable and wonderful discovery but he obtained phils peral permission alon to have the black bronea examined by somebody who knew more about such matters than he did philadelphia then as now was the home of learned scientists mineralogists and sa to them colonel weiss went taking g with him several specimens of ginters find among the savants savanis was charles cist a printer who at once pronounced it stone coal and who told colonel that there was a fortune in it they at once determined to buy G ginter inter off upon his showing bowing n them the place where he had sound found the specimens but ginter was coy lie ile reasoned with hl himself m self that it if the find was worth the sum th they ey offered him it was worth more anil and he held back he ile told them in pennsyl it v vania ida dutch that they might hunt until doomsday doomsday and never find it then they agreed to ginterr Gin tera proposal that ther the give him title to a tract of land in the locality upon which he could and afterward did build a small mill lie he had bad scarcely built the mill however when he ascertained that it was owned by somebody ese else and that his title was worthless in the fo Vowing year 1702 weiss cist and a man named gate formed themselves into the lehigh coalmine mine com company p any they bad had no charter or incorporation n but they took up acres of land in the t it e lo 10 cahty Wit yand and began toworu to work the mine in a rude mole way they sent small quantities I 1 es of coal to philadelphia but it proved next to worthier and in a number of instances instance instead of burning put the fire out this dis heartened the company and for awhile nothing was done to develop the mines it was not until 1812 that rs white hazard wire manufacturers manufacture ra at schuylkill falls attempted to work them successfully sit cess cm fully and also to work the legislature into a boheme to improve the schuylkill river offering as au an inducement the fact that the mountains were full of coal the legislature bite however and the scheme temporarily fell through A year later in december 1813 the company mode made a lease to miner cist CIA robinson Ro bimson giving them permission to develop the mines the only consideration being that tbt the workers take out annually bush els of coal for their benefit in december 1817 the ehigh lehigh L coal mine 4 company executed another lease imse this to 10 white lunk hazard the lease was tor for twenty years and included the whole territory of acres the lamees lessees agreed thit that after a given time for preparation they should deliver annually at least bushels in philadelphia and the surrounding districts and should sell it for their own benefit for this privilege vile ge they were to pay the annia annual al rent of ono one ear of corn having obtained the lease leose the lessees lessels applied to the legislature for permission to make the lehigh river navigable and thus to convey their coal to market the learned legisla legislators tore laughed at them and told them plainly that their scheme w was vs chimerical that there was nothing in it anil and that their dod aasted atone stone coal would woul 11 only put out the fires instead of making them burn brighter on march 20 1818 however the legislature gave the lessels lessees an opportunity to ruin themselves as they put it and in the following august the lehigh navigation company was formed with a capital of in october the lehigh coal company was formed with a capital of tor for tho the purpose of mailing making a road from the mines to the river and of taking the coal to market by means of the new navigation mavi gation this road down the mountain was begun at once and waa was was finished in 1819 it Is the same road over which the famous Switch switchback Lack cars now run from summit hill in carbon county to upper mauch chunk and over which thoua thousand ands of pleasure seekers now ride in it Is salla said to have b bein sai ati thell e roal roul tva waa a e ever eer er laid out with witt transit and level new york world |