Firth Dock and the Schuylkill Coal Trade

Standing here in the eighteen hundreds, you would have heard the thunder of anthracite coal cascading into canal boats bound for Philadelphia. The Firth Dock, also known as the Palo Alto Loading Dock, was built by the Schuylkill Navigation Company on land belonging to Philadelphia merchant Thomas Firth.

At its height, this facility helped move up to half a million tons of coal per year along the Schuylkill Canal, fueling the furnaces, forges, and factories of the young American industrial economy. The canal itself ran for many miles and was one of the engineering marvels of the early republic. The dock operated from eighteen twenty-eight through eighteen seventy-one, after which the railroads rendered the canal obsolete. The anthracite trade it served helped transform Pennsylvania into the industrial heart of nineteenth-century America.