(twangy music) - In the late 1810s, there was a serious effort to begin to do large scale canal construction as an efficient way to start to move bulky cargo.

The impetus for that here in Eastern Pennsylvania was the need to transport anthracite coal from the northeastern part of the state to the biggest city in North America at that time, which was Philadelphia.

Moving coal by road was expensive and slow and costly and inefficient.

Moving coal by water became the solution for that problem.

The Lehigh Canal began as a process in 1818.

That was when two businessmen from Philadelphia named Josiah White and Erskine Hazard decided that they had between them, figured out ways to make the transportation of anthracite from the coal regions to Philadelphia, which was a distance of about 100 miles, more efficient and more cost effective.

And to get it by wagon was a very slow and difficult process.

And when they would get anthracite delivered over land to Philadelphia, it was too expensive.

The canals were built, for the most part, was done in the 1820s and '30s by Irish immigrant men.

In the 1820s, there were no power tools, there were no backhoes.

Everything was done by hand with shovels, axes, wheelbarrows.

The speed limit on the canal was approximately an average of two miles an hour.

Two miles an hour for an 18 hour day was actually in the 1820s faster than anyone could travel for that long of a time up to that point.

With the completion of the Erie Canal, attention turned to building a two-way navigation, which meant that they could load boats that were carrying as much as 100 tons of coal, bring them down on a series of canals, establish two-way navigation where you could fill a boat, deliver the cargo, turn the boat around, take the boat back upstream, reload it, and then make the trip again.

(twangy music) Mules are really the ideal animal for this job, for a number of reasons.

Being hybrid for one thing, a hybrid of a horse and a and a donkey.

Pound for pound, they're stronger than horses.

They are much more resistant to disease.

One of the important things about mules is that they know how to pace themselves.

You cannot force a mule to go faster or to work when something is wrong.

If it's hot or injured or ill, or too hungry or too thirsty, a mule will stop and will not go on until you have fixed the problem.

So therefore, you can't force a mule to work until it drops, which you can force a horse to do.

(twangy music) (conch blows) - All aboard.

(twangy music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Martha] The canals began to decline with the coming of the railroads.

Chief advantage of the railroads was that they could work all year long.

Every canal in Pennsylvania closed in winter because you can't pull a boat through ice.

And little by little, the decline of carriage of anthracite and other freight began to go down.

In the spring in 1942, there were two successive, very devastating floods, and that pretty much wrecked the Lehigh Canal at a point when there was no point in restoring any of it.

And the canal slowly closed bit by bit, and that was the end of the canal as anything other than a recreational body of water.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues)