The Lehigh Path: Ancient Road Through the Mountains

For generations, a Native footpath passed through this steep mountain terrain that had served as a highway for centuries.

The Lehigh Path connected the Forks of the Delaware River, near present-day Easton, northwest to Wyoming on the Susquehanna, near present-day Wilkes-Barre. It was one of several linked paths that formed a web of communication and trade between the Delaware and Susquehanna river drainages. Travelers included the Lenni-Lenape and Susquehannock peoples, who maintained these routes across country that European horses and wagons could barely navigate.

The path crossed the same mountains you are passing through now. Long after European settlement made the route obsolete, the physical trace of the path remained readable in the landscape, a reminder that the roads we drive today often follow, in their broad contours, the paths that Indigenous people walked for generations before us.