The oxbow bend in the Lehigh River at Rockport, PA where it rounds Summer Mountain (at left). Penn Haven Mountain is at right. This point was the northernmost reach of the Lehigh Navigation Canal, built to ship anthracite coal downriver to Philadelphia in the years prior to the Civil War. This canal was wiped out in the flood of 1862. Subsequently two railroad lines did the coal hauling, the Lehigh Valley Railroad (on the east bank, left) and the Central Railroad of New Jersey (west bank, right).

The tracks of the Jersey Central have been removed to make way for a hiker-biker path in present day Lehigh Gorge State Park. The Lehigh Valley Railroad (now Conrail) tracks pass through a short tunnel dug through the narrow neck of summer Mountain. The tunnel was dug well over 100 years ago.

As late as the mid 1960s a hand-hauled cable car passed across, and about 20 feet above the river toward the background of this picture. This mechanism was the only way to cross, dry, between White Haven and Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe). We swam across or used the cable car. Beneath was a cold, deep pool, just ahead of a set of rapids but just right for swimming and diving from the cable car on a hot summer day. The flat rocks at right were fine for drying out if you kept a sharp eye for sunning watersnakes.

The valley of the Lehigh River is a steep-sided gorge or canyon from this point on, to Jim Thorpe downstream. Here the mountaintops rise three to four hundred feet above the riverbed. Near White Haven where the gorge begins, the rise is about two hundred feet; At Jim Thorpe it increases to seven hundred feet.

This is a due south view. Upstream the river flows southwesterly to the oxbow bend. Downstream, around the bend to the east, the river reverses direction. The river is low as indicated by the exposed boulders. Midsummer, 2002.