Carbon County was created on March 13, 1843 from parts of Northampton and Monroe Counties and was named for the extensive deposits of anthracite coal in the region, where it was first discovered (1791) and early attempts were made to exploit the deposits by the Lehigh Coal Mine Company (1792), whose expeditions broke trail and pioneered river bank sites using mule animal powered technology to log, saw, and build arks to carry bags of coal to Philadelphia, with only scant success.