Today, there are few places to cross the Lehigh River, especially in the upper reaches of the Lehigh Gorge where Carbon County’s Kidder Township and Luzerne County’s Foster Township face one another across the Lehigh River near White Haven and Lehigh Tannery. 

These crossings are all bridges. However, during the early history of this region, either: bridges hadn’t yet existed, or more often, had existed and were washed away by the sudden Lehigh River swellings called freshets. 

John Lines, White Haven area’s first settler arrived in 1824 from Hanover Township just below Wilkes-Barre. He built a hewed-log house, a sawmill, and a tavern along Linesville Creek—about a half-mile south of the White Haven bridge crossing. 

Around this outpost, the settlement of Linesville developed. Lines had squatted the land, and never gained title to the property. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company purchased the property and renamed it, White Haven, after the company’s manager, Josiah White. 

In 1835, LC&N began construction of its Upper Grand Division of its Lehigh Navigation System. It began with the erection of dams and locks at White Haven, Linesville/Bridgeport, and Lehigh Tannery. Immediately sawmills were constructed to harness the waterpower to convert the region’s vast timber acreage into lumber for the canals, canal boats and housing. 

In those early years, lumber was the most significant business on the navigation system. The Lehigh River became a large sluiceway for floating logs from Stoddartsville and Tobyhanna to the White Haven area sawmills. 

With the growth workers at both the sawmills and the Lehigh Tannery, workers needed to get from their workplace on the east side of the Lehigh River, to purchase supplies at White Haven on the west side of the river. White Haven had become a terminal for the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad for transport of foodstuffs and materials from Wilkes-Barre. 

Earl Kresge - a White Haven Area historian explained how that was done at a recent organizational meeting to form a White Haven Area Historical Society. He explained that a rope ferry once transported people from White Haven – on the Luzerne side, to East Borough on the Carbon County side. He first learned of the rope ferry at a meeting to condemn the dam abutment on the Carbon County side to use for a pumping station. 

After the dam was built above White Haven, the workers and settlers on the Carbon County side had two options to cross the Lehigh River, Kresge explained. “Most the people that came over in those days either forded the river in a low area or walked across the top of the dam.” When the water was low, both were possible, although wet and slippery. 

In 1841, a freshet damaged the Upper Division. The dams and locks were repaired. In 1849, Lucius Blakslee started a rope ferry service connecting White Haven on the Luzerne side with East Haven on the Carbon County side of the Lehigh River. Blakslee owned an East Haven sawmill. His sister, Sarah, would become Mrs. Asa Packer. 

On the East Haven side, a road to the rope ferry descended to the Lehigh River from a road that pre-dated Rt. 940 at a point about two blocks north of the current Berwick Street Bridge. The rope ferry crossed the Lehigh River perpendicular to the flow, docking on the White Haven side about two blocks north of the current bridge, near the historic stone LC&N Warehouse Building. 

The rope ferry was powered by the current in the river. Once passengers and freight were loaded, the helmsman adjusted the tiller so that the ferry was facing upstream and slightly inclined to the oncoming flow in the direction it was heading. The force of the water pushed the boat sideways toward the opposing shore and downstream, which was resisted by attachment to a rope across the river. The rope was tensioned between supports on each shore that kept the rope high out of the water. 

Kresge was not aware of any records describing the type of boat that was used for the rope ferry. He ventured a guess that a packet boat may have been used. At other rope ferries of that period, log rafts were often used. 

On June 4 through June 5, 1862, a heavy rain created a freshet whose waters transformed thousands of logs in the Lehigh River into battering rams, pummeling the dams and locks into near oblivion. The Upper Division of the Lehigh Navigation was never rebuilt but, because of the demand by the sawmills for waterpower, the upper three dams were rebuilt at White Haven, Linesville/Bridgeport, and Lehigh Tannery. 

In 1864, two years after the 1862 flood, the Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad was acquired by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. In 1867, they built a wooden railroad crossing between Bridgeport and Linesville. Pedestrians used this bridge to cross the Lehigh River—at their own risk! 

The rope ferry was back in operation. However, although the rope ferry was successful, it could not operate during periods of high water, low water or during the winter when the Lehigh River would ice over. Petitions were raised in 1870, 1873, 1876, 1885 and 1887 to create a permanent bridge between East Haven and White Haven. 

Around the 1890s, a wooden bridge was built from East Haven to White Haven at the Berwick Street location of the current bridge. The wooden bridge narrowly escaped the high water of Dec. 14, 1901 flood and was destroyed a year later by the flood of 1902. 

A temporary wooden pedestrian bridge was constructed after the 1902 flood and a steel bridge replaced that in 1903. The bridge’s wooden deck quickly deteriorated and was replaced with creosoted planks in 1913. 

In 1887, the Lehigh Valley Railroad replaced its wooden railroad crossing between Bridgeport and Linesville with a steel bridge. This bridge was destroyed by the flood of 1861 and immediately replaced. The new bridge was destroyed a year later in the flood of 1902. 

A bridge at Lehigh Tannery was swept away by a flood in 1869 and replaced by a steel bridge in 1892. The new bridge design was subjected to accelerated rusting and by 1897 was in danger of collapsing. Ironically, it was the only bridge to withstand the floods of both 1901 and 1902. It was replaced in 1903. 

The dam at White Haven no longer exists but was still in operation when Kresge was a boy. “You talk about early rafting—back when we were kids, we used to sit in a inner tube on the top of the dam, slide off into the pour-over from the dam and go all the way to Jim Thorpe,” he said. “It was rough after a good rain.” 

“A buddy of mine’s father was an engineer on the LVRR. We tubed down and we’d get on at Jim Thorpe and ride back with him in the engine.”