Anthracite iron charcoal — long the fuel of preference for smelting and glass making, creating a decades long search for alternative fuels. By mid-1792 prominent Philadelphians had formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LHCM Co.) to bring Anthracite to cities reachable via the Delaware River Valley, especially Philadelphia — the nation's largest and most industrialized city, though no one fully understood how to use anthracite as a sole fuel—just that "it 'could' burn 'some' of the time" with a hot enough base fire, so could augment furnace fuels. The LHCM Co. had great difficulty getting many ark-loads of coal to the docks
History of anthracite coal mining in Pennsylvania the building of a canal. By 1840, over 250,000 tons of anthracite mined from the region annually reached Philadelphia through White and Hazard’s Lehigh River system (Dublin, Licht, 12-3). A group of Germans wanted to seek the rights to the Schuylkill River. They received a charter in 1815 to incorporate the Schuylkill Navigation Company, which would have control over the Schuylkill River. After receiving investors the Schuylkill Navigation Company was able to finance a 108-mile long river and canal system that connected the Pottsville area to Philadelphia that opened in 1825. By the early 1840s, some 500,000 tons of anthracite