Pennsylvania Canal, North Branch Division

The North Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal was built between eighteen twenty-eight and eighteen thirty-one for a single vital purpose: moving coal from the mines at Nanticoke south to Northumberland, and from there onward to inland towns and seaport cities. Along its route, engineers built two dams, fourteen locks, and seven aqueducts to manage the terrain. The canal carried coal until nineteen oh one, nearly seventy years of continuous operation.

If you look carefully at the landscape here, traces of the old towpath and canal bed are still visible. They are physical evidence of the era when Pennsylvania's canal network, before the railroads arrived, was the economic artery of the entire state, moving anthracite coal that heated homes and fueled industry across the eastern seaboard.