White and Hazard researched (or invented) emerging technologies as needed, pioneering industrial innovations including the first wire suspension bridge over the Schuylkill River.

[6] The lower canal began as a collection of removed stone obstructions and low rock dams with a system of wooden "bear-trap locks" invented by Lehigh Navigation and Coal Company managing partner Josiah White, who debugged scale models of the lock design on Mauch Chunk Creek.

Experiments with the bear-trap locks gave Bear Lane, an alley in Mauch Chunk off Broadway in today's Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, its name.

[7] White and partner Erskine Hazard, who operated a wire mill, foundry and nail factory at the Falls of the Schuylkill, needed energy.

After learning the value of anthracite during the British blockades in 1814, White and Hazard joined a number of Philadelphians in a joint-stock venture to build the Schuylkill Canal but quarreled with those on the board of managers who did not favor rapid development.

They learned that the managers of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company were willing to option their rights because of their long-term inability to make a profit by transporting anthracite nearly 110 miles (180 km) from Pisgah Ridge.

White and Hazard made a proposal specifying improvements for downriver navigation only, and received a charter giving the company ownership of the river in March 1818.

The plan for locks and gates for letting out the freshet in a proper manner was left for the present to be devised in due time if found necessary.Sometimes called the Stone Coal Turnpike,[3] the lower canal (46.5 miles (74.8 km)) was built between 1818 and 1820 by the Lehigh Navigation Company to supply coal to Eastern seaboard cities and operated as a toll road with downriver traffic only.

A wing wall projected into the upper pool to create slack water next to the loading docks, at the same level as the top of the first guard dam.

When tipped or triggered, they released several acre-feet (creating a wave to raise the water level as the canal boat sank downriver).

[f] The cost of building an ark for every load of coal delivered to the Philadelphia docks in 1822 (as LC&N operations were hitting their stride) worried the company's board of directors.

By late in the year, White had shifted construction efforts from improving the one-way system (begun in 1818) to a test project on the four upper dams of the canal.

The project involved two-way dams and locks with a wider lift channel and lengths of over 120 feet (37 m), capable of taking a steam tug and a coastal cargo ship from 45.6 miles (73.4 km) from the Delaware to the slack-water pool at Mauch Chunk.

In 1823, after building and testing four locks, Josiah White made a proposal to the Pennsylvania legislature to continue the improvements down the Lehigh River.

His plan included locks suitable for a coastal schooner and towing steam tug, the types of boats which dominated ports along the 62 miles (100 km) of the Delaware River controlled by the LC&N.

[3] The following year, the legislature rejected his proposal; lumber and timber interests feared that damming would prevent them from rafting logs on the rivers to local sawmills.

White and Hazard scrambled to increase mine production while producing enough lumber for arks to send their coal along the Delaware to Philadelphia.

In 1831, the LC&N stopped making one-way arks and began building large, durable barges, expecting their return via a connection with the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal in Easton.

The Upper Lehigh Canal, designed by Canvass White, was built from 1837 to 1843 as authorized by the 1837 revision of the Main Line of Public Works.