Map: © Stephen F. Payer, 01/24/2004, All rights reserved

This map was compiled from the two circa 1890 geological source maps listed below. The originals were found in the Pennsylvania State University archives at this link. These originals are of well over a hundred megabytes in size and require the MrSid viewer to resolve them into sections for further composition work with Adobe Photoshop and JASC Paint Shop Pro. The coloring of the originals was not uniform and in many cases it obscured the text and fine details of place names, roads and streams. Using computer graphics techniques, map sections in the vicinity of the tri-county junction were recolored for improved clarity and geographically checked against the USGS topographical quads for the tri-county area.

The map follows the axis of the coal deposits, southwest to northeast, and ranges between Tremont on the southwest and Girard Manor/Park Place on the northeast. A similar map, continuing the traverse to the northeast, extends the view to Upper Lehigh and Rockport on the Lehigh River..

Notes:

1. For the most part, the highland portions of the map (greater than 1000' above sea level) are represented by the gray coal bearing measures and the tan Pottsville Conglomerate stratum. So also is the light brown Pocono Sandstone stratum of Broad Mountain. The light green Mauch Chunk Red Shale coloration roughly represents the valley lowlands, except as one goes northeast, where even the valleys merge into the Pocono Highlands.

2. The names of the towns are given as of 1880-1890 or thereabouts. In many cases these small patchtowns are long gone, having been removed to make way for nineteenth and twentieth century mining operations. The same is true for the smaller streams, many having been sent down the mines by later strip mining operations.

3. In some cases, roads appear to stop at the county boundaries. This is an artifact of separate surveys, done by county long ago. Other equivalent maps of that era would have to be referenced to investigate and confirm or bridge these gaps.