Carbon County, Pennsylvania: History
=== Moravian settlement ===
In 1745, the first colonial settlement in Carbon County was established by a Moravian mission in Gnadenhutten, in present-day Lehighton. By 1752, increased hostility between colonialists and Indians put Gnadenhutten at risk for attack; in 1755, the community was attacked by Indians.
In the late 1780s, the county's settlement at Lehigh Gap failed, and colonizers did not return for a decade, in the late 1780s.
In 1791, a homesteader, Phillip Ginter, hunting on Sharp Mountain along Pisgah Mountain discovered a black tone coal outcropping, and conveyed a chunk of it to Weissport.
Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) operations had managed to open up the mouth area of the Nesquehoning Creek by 1800. This area became known as Lausanne, or Lausanne Landing, after the inn and tavern built there called Landing Tavern. An Indian trail crossed the stream near the confluence with Jean's Run and the camp grounds of their boat builders, climbing northwestwards along a traverse to the next water gap west, eroded into the southern flank of Broad Mountain in the Lehigh Valley. It connected across a barrier ridge whose waters originated in the saddle-pass where Hazleton was built. The trail became the Lehigh and Susquehanna Turnpike in 1804. PA Route 93 follows this route with the exception of where modern road building capabilities allowed improved positioning. This road cut 90–100 miles (140–160 km) off a trip from Philadelphia to the Wyoming Valley and the northern sections of the Coal Region.
In 1827, Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, based in present-day Jim Thorpe, launched the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, the nation's second operating railroad. The Beaver Meadow Railroad and Coal Company, also located in Carbon County, was the first railway to operate steam locomotives as traction engines and prime movers in the United States. The Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway connected mines west of Beaver Meadows and Weatherly to the Lehigh Canal opposite Lehighton.
Carbon County was created on March 13, 1843, from parts of Northampton and Monroe counties and was named for the extensive deposits of anthracite coal in the region, where it was first discovered in 1791. Early attempts were made to exploit the deposits by Lehigh Coal Mine Company (1792), whose expeditions broke trail and pioneered river bank sites using mule powered technology to log, saw, and build arks to carry bags of coal to Philadelphia with only scant success.
In the 19th century, Carbon County was the location of trials and executions of the Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society that terrorized the region, attacking officials, police officers, and industrial equipment.