State of Place

Planning a summer tour while the Civil War is raging? We recommend a train ride through New Jersey to the coal-fields of Pennsylvania.

Advertisement from the back of Harper’s Magazine. August, 1864.

UPDATE:

Here’s a link to the full text copy from Google Books.

Journey to the Coal-fields in a larger map

More below:

“But it is only after entering Pennsylvania (the whole eastern half of which is traversed by connecting lines) that one can fairly appreciate the extent and variety of scenery which the route affords. Mountain ranges of characteristic grandeur, cleft here and there by abrupt fissures to their very base, through which stately rivers lead their pomp of waters to the sea; rich and beautiful valleys, sometimes so narrow, and, withal, so picturesque, as to remind the traveler of Swiss cantons among the Alps, and sometimes allowed a broader and longer reach by the yielding mountain ranges that inclose them; forests that still retain the rugged aspect of their primeval wilderness, and romantic cascades. The mention of these features but feebly suggests the reality as seen by the eye. The reader must actually visit the Delaware Water Gap, he must himself climb the Pocono range, he must follow the Susquehanna in its winding course for a hundred miles, he must himself look upon the Valley of the Wyoming, with its tragic memorials and its beautiful villages, he must see with his own eyes the rich Valley of Lebanon, he must be drawn up the inclined planes of Mount Pisgah at Mauch Chunk, he must actually realize these things in his own experience, for it is beyond our power adequately to describe them. The sketches too, from the hand of the artist, good as they are, but suggest an outline of the real scene, destitute of the rich charm and body of reality which color imparts, as also of the element of vastness, so prominent in most of the scenes delineated.

To the scientific tourist there is a distinctive attraction connected with traveling in Pennsylvania generally, viz., the fact that in a geological sense this.state is literally the keystone of the Union, for in its peculiar formations is to be found the key to the geology of the whole country. It was in this state that the first ridges of the Appalachian range were thrown up, which were followed at intervals by other parallel ridges to the southward. There is also this additional peculiarity: that in Pennsylvania, more than in any other state, the coal measures have been preserved, having been simply opened up by the natural convulsions incident to the upheaval of mountain ranges, and not, as is generally the case, entirely swept away by an excess of violence.

It is to this peculiarity that Eastern Pennsylvania owes its rich treasury of anthracite coal, from which it derives the greater portion of its wealth. These anthracite coal-fields are accessible through two important connections of the Central Road, viz., the Lehigh Valley, and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, as previously stated. Of course to the tourist there is a greater charm, as regards novelty, in the mechanical developments of resources of this nature than is the case in the ordinary appliances of agricultural industry, and for this reason, added to many others, the route which is under consideration is eminently fitted for the purposes of excursionists.

Considered in this connection, the route naturally divides itself into two—a longer one, extending nearly to the southern border of Pennsylvania, and a shorter one, included within the limits of the anthracite coal region. By the former of these we are conveyed as far as Hampton Junction, along the Central Road, where we take the Lackawanna Road through Warren County to the Water Gap, and from thence over the Pocono Mountain to Scranton. From this point, over the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Road, we proceed through the Wyoming Valley to Northumberland, where we take the Northern Central Railroad to Harrisburg, the southern limit of our route, from which we return through Reading, Allentown, and Easton to New York, over the Philadelphia and Reading, the East Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey.”

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