Map: © Stephen F. Payer, 11/19/2003, All rights reserved

This map was compiled from the three 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. Correspondence (by overlay on modern USGS topographical maps) is quite accurate except for the upper northeast portion of the map, above Rockport on the Lehigh River.

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

Notes:

In a few cases, anomalies and changed place names are shown in dark green color.

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 thePocono Highlands.

2. The names of the towns are given as of 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. This is especially true in the present day McAdoo locale on Spring Mountain. McAdoo was then called Pleasant Hill. Centtown, Slabtown, and Yorktown no longer exist. Junedale was called Leviston in those days.

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. Note that such a break occurs for the road from Girard Manor to Hazleton. This road probably connected with somebody is today Route 924 near the vicinity of Humboldt. However, in those days there existed a main county road from Jeanesville to Sheppton passing a little north of Beaver Brook, then going farther west nearby the mine drainage tunnels at the foot of the Green Mountain Slope. This road today is no more than a rutted dirt track accessible only by 4WD vehicles.

Note that the road from Tresckow bypassed the few houses of "Pleasant Hill" and went directly to Silver Brook. One passed through "The Arch" at the foot of the Mile Hill in going from Audenreid to the Quakake Valley. This stone overpass for the Quakake Branch of the LVRR is covered elsewhere. An alternate route to the Valley was through Silver Brook.

4. A missing railroad segment, from the Green Mountain Slope to Audenreid, is shown in dark green. I am not sure whether coal from this region was hauled to Audenreid or to Beaver Brook for processing. "Green Mountain" was abandoned in the early part of the twentieth century, but was well known to my parents' generation.