The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded in 1792, a few months after anthracite was discovered at Sharpe Mountain (a peak of the Pisgah Ridge near present-day Summit Hill, Pennsylvania); Its principals secured rights to over before the Lehigh Canal was built. The company found it fairly easy to find and mine coal from a pit on the mountainside, the coal had to be loaded into sacks and then onto pack animals which carried the coal at least to the Lehigh shore. Disposable skiffs known as arks were built from local timber, which were manned along the lower Lehigh River rapids. Despite many politically connected stockholders and officers, the operation was unsupervised by upper management.