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Early History of Mauch Chunk. Once a lookout for the Lenape Indians, Flagstaff Mountain is 1, feet above sea level and almost 1, feet above the town. The mountain got its name at the start of the Civil War when a group of patriotic Unionists flew the American flag from the top of a dead hemlock tree on its summit. Following the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, precipitating the Spanish-American War, the largest American flag ever flown to that date was unfurled across the Lehigh River between Flagstaff and Bear Mountains.
The flag measured 75 feet, 8 inches long by 57 feet wide and weighed pounds. Ten thousand spectators cheered, cannons boomed, whistles blew, and bands played as the enormous flag moved from Bear Mountain across the Lehigh on its 3, foot cable.
Mauch Chunk was the first wide spot along the river located next to the Broad Mountain. The town got its start as a canal center, and later a railroad center. It was the destination of the Switchback Railroad. Switchback The early growth of Pennsylvania's railroads was closely intertwined with the mining of anthracite coal.
In the early s, Pennsylvania coal mine operators faced a daunting challenge: how to carry tons of heavy black coal from their mines to the canals and rivers below, upon which it could be transported to market. Gravity railroads were the initial solution, connecting the sources of coal to the Lehigh Canal, Delaware and Hudson Canal, and other man-made waterways that floated the vital fuel to Philadelphia, New York, and other industrial centers.
It took only three months and twenty-six days to complete construction of a line measuring about nine miles in length that included nearly four miles of branch-line track that connected several mines. Freight cars rode on twenty-foot-long wooden rails that were fortified with iron straps. Located in Carbon County, along the Mauch Chunk Creek not far from the Lehigh River, much of the town remains as it did when the coal industry, railroad, and canal system came together to create a wealthy town beginning in the s.
The switchback railroad was the first railroad constructed for the movement of coal in this country. Mauch Chunk became a tourist town as the coal industry died out; and the switchback became a tourist attraction drawing people from urban areas along the east coast to the country for a ride along the line. Today a mile trail exists along the former railroad bed. The Molly Maguires were a secret organization formed by Irish immigrant coal miners who fought for better working conditions in the coal fields of western Pennsylvania, beginning in
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