Carbon County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Its county seat is Jim Thorpe, founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk, a company town of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) as it built a wagon road nine miles to their coal mine at today’s Summit Hill, and constructed the Lehigh Canal navigations.
In 1827, that wagon road became the nation’s second operating railroad, the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad which is regarded as the world’s first roller coaster, which became its main function between 1873–1931.
The area around Mauch Chunk was known as the “Switzerland of America”, the long wide slack water pool above the Lehigh’s upper dam being surrounded by Mauch Chunk Ridge, Bear Mountain, Pisgah Ridge, Mount Pisgah, Nesquehoning Ridge, Broad Mountain and their various prominences and summits.
These amazing photos from Gordon Morales were taken by photographer Ephraim E. Rinker (1886-1950) that show street scenes of Carbon County, Pennsylvania in the 1920s and 1930s.
American Amoco Gas station, Carbon County, Pennsylvania
Bear hunt, Carbon County, Pennsylvania
Bertsch Street facing east, Lansford, Pennsylvania
Burnt building, Carbon County, Pennsylvania
Cars (1936 plates on car), Carbon County, Pennsylvania
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