Panther Creek (Little Schuylkill River tributary)
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Panther Creek is a west-draining left-bank tributary of the Little Schuylkill River's drainage basin and rises in the vicinity of the east side of Lansford in the plateau-like nearly flat terrain of the complex three-way saddle between Mount Pisgah to its east, Nesquehoning Ridge to the north and Pisgah Ridge to the south, both ridgelines flanking its entire course as it makes its way east-northeast to west-southwest.
| Panther Creek | |
|---|---|
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | |
| • location | Over the Lehigh Valley drainage divide due west of Palmerton, Pennsylvania below Mount Pisgah (below the join of Pisgah Ridge with Nesquehoning Mountain and Mauch Chunk Mountain). |
| Mouth | |
• location | Little Schuylkill River at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania |
• coordinates | 40°47′46″N 75°57′58″W / 40.79600°N 75.96613°W |
| Length | c. 8 mi (13 km) |
The creek's valley is historically and industrially important having been mostly owned by the historically significant Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company which eventually built the Panther Creek Railroad from Lansford to Tamaqua and the Hauto Tunnel to haul coal from the copious anthracite deposits, collieries, and coal breakers along an easier route than up and over the mountains to Jim Thorpe and the Lehigh Canal via Summit Hill and the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, North America's second-oldest operational railroad and its first Gravity and Switchback railroads.
The coal seams of the valley were the first deposits discovered and exploited by any company beginning with surface deposits along the south ridge leading to the founding of Summit Hill, then Lansford in western Carbon County, then the downstream towns of Coaldale and Tamaqua in eastern Schuylkill County.
The new company, a leaned-down and reorganized Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company still mines the coal deposits in the valley and owns all of its mineral rights.