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As was the case of most development in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, settlers preceded public infrastructure and later built roads and bridges on an ad hoc basis to move livestock, crops, and information to and from social and market centers. Three three major towns of the Lehigh Valley each contained three waterways that would soon become impediments to land transportation. In Bethlehem, some settlers either squatted or purchased land south of the Moravian-owned property in what would become South Bethlehem. These settlers improved a convenient north-south Indian path known as the Minsi Trail. To cross the river, John Adam Schaus operated a ferry at a site near the present Union Terminal. The ferry was not legally obligated to maintain regular service, thus continual service depended on the determination and mettle of individual ferrymen.[1] Southerly traffic of agricultural staples to Philadelphia was increasing over what remained rough rutted Indian paths. Sensing that there was money to be made in the nation's desire for improved transportation, private interest preceded public investment in roads, bridges, and canals. Many joint stock toll road and bridge companies proliferated in the early national period. In 1794, Schaus' ferry was replaced by the first permanent bridge over the Lehigh in Bethlehem. Built by private subscription, the $7,800 uncovered bridge, combined with road improvements, accelerated overland travel and facilitated the interchange of goods, capital and ideas from Philadelphia, Reading, Lancaster, and Allentown. In Allentown, Jacob Blumer constructed a handsome chain-cabled suspension bridge over the Lehigh at Hamilton Street which began collecting tolls in 1814. Yet another private company, the Delaware Bridge Company, received a charter in 1795 to build a bridge across the Delaware from Easton to Phillipsburg. When it opened in 1806, it was the second fully covered bridge in the country after the Permanent Bridge at Market Street in Philadelphia.[2]
While private companies sought to cross over the Lehigh, Philadelphia entrepreneurs Josiah White and Erskine Hazard decided to use the Lehigh River to transport coal from the Pocono Mountains, 50 miles to the north, to Philadelphia roughly 50 miles to the south. In 1829 they completed a lock canal that ran from the coal depot at Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) to Easton on the Delaware River. Soon thousands of canal boats passed through Bethlehem every year, bringing outsiders and goods through what was still a church-dominated community. The canal led to real estate speculation along its pathway. When Moravian business suffered financial difficulties in the wake of the Panic of 1837 and the Lehigh River flood of 1841, the church had to bail out its members to keep Bethlehem's land in Moravian hands. These financial problems led the Moravian church to privatize the community in 1844. In 1848, the Moravian administrator Philip H. Goepp transferred a large parcel of former Moravian farmland on the southside of the river to Charles A. Luckenbach, who platted the first urban grid south of the Lehigh in 1854. Unlike the stolid stone buildings of the Moravians, the first new homes erected among the cluster of the preexisting farm dwellings near the bridge were simple balloon-frame clapboard structures.[3] Almost from the outset, Luckenbach's "Augusta" attracted speculators and industrialists. Philadelphia industrialists Joseph Wharton and Samuel Weatherill acquired several acres along the river and built a zinc smelter.
