This is the important northern entrance into the river cut gully or gap between highlands, and was an important barge loading transshipment point on the newly extended upper Lehigh Canal fed initially by a shortline railroad from the Mountain Top yard dating from the 1837 enabling legislation set up to join the Lehigh and Susquehanna Valleys via Mountain Top and the Ashley Planes incline railway.

The central access point is near Rockport, a few miles off Pennsylvania Route 93 near the borough of Weatherly, where the mountainous terrain is transitional, creating a relatively shallow sloped flat.

This access point is on the opposite bank from the Glen Onoko nature and hiking trail which climbs up slope westerly alongside the tributary descending Glen Onoko Falls giving the eponymous name to that region of the lower gorge, whilst the Lehigh descends through several sharp curves before reaching the slack water elevation of Nesquehoning Junction between Jim Thorpe and Nesquehoning.

The Lehigh River flows generally south and enters Dennison Township, then the borough of White Haven, the northern access point, on the right (Luzerne) bank.

[7] The history of Lehigh Gorge State Park is tied into the development of anthracite coal mining, which was once the center of the high-tech economy of northeastern Pennsylvania.

It is also tied into the early-to-middle period of the United States' Canal Era and the rapid development of pragmatic railroading technologies and consequent accelerated growth and use of railroads—all contributing factors in the Pennsylvanian and North American Industrial Revolution.

England's technological lead was obvious and its extensive canal system was given much credit for the success of Britain's industries and its emergence as the sole world power at the end of the Seven Years' War.

It was the end days of the era that had held for millennia— when shipping bulks goods was only practicable over long distances by water, and one consequence was roads were not much more than unimproved tracks frequently more muddy ruts or filled with rocky obstacles as they wandered about trees and along ridgelines striving to stay above streams.

Traditional Amerindian footpaths or game trails did not co-exist readily with carts or wagons, and bridges were scarce while streams swarm along the bottom of every valley in rain-blessed Pennsylvania.

High grade coal was discovered by a hunter on Sharp Mountain in 1791 above the steep sided valleys surrounding Tamaqua, but the news quickly led to other discoveries such as on at the minor peak called Summit Hill on Pisgah Mountain six miles due east of Tamaqua and as much closer to the ship-navigable Delaware watershed—from Summit Hill, the rapids plagued Lehigh River and the higher capacity of boats was but just over a ridge and a half days haul by mules away.

The gorge became historic and not just scenic when such investors came together to continue the English model, canals between major cities of source and supply, if necessary carried across viaducts above streams to provide cheap bulk materials transfers.

By the early 1820s, the new management of the Lehigh Coal Mining Company would show the way and the LCMC would disappear as a subsidiary corporation and became a key element in one of the nation's first vertical mergers.

Hence LC&N had tamed the lower river and a mule road was operating reliably enough to deliver coal in a timely manner from Summit Hill and new mines being dug at what are now Lansford and Coaldale.

By 1824, the Lehigh Canal was shipping record amounts of coal and adding further navigations creating a two way barge highway, this set the stage to founding the Upper Grand Section of the Lehigh Canal through ambitious improvements through the Gorge between White Haven and Jim Thorpe, with a rail link from the Susquehanna at Pittston via Ashley, Mountain Top, and White Haven which would allow goods from Pittsburgh and the Ohio river valley and coal from the Wilkes-Barre area to come east to coastal market cities.

By mid-decade in the 1820s, inspired by LC&N success and the Erie Canal the state legislature had formed the Canal Commission and begun funding the survey work and start up of the future Pennsylvania Canal— which was in the planning conception, Railroads being new untried technology in its infancy— to also put an actual long canal channel between the Schuylkill basin (Delaware Valley) and the Susquehanna (connecting the Potomac Valley, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Richmond and Washington, D.C.) as well as an ambitious and audacious subproject of crossing the Alleghenies (see Allegheny Portage Railroad), which in the early funding took most of the monies delaying the easier ditch across the Pennsylvanian Great Valley.

Other factions pointed out by the early 1830s that the long channel across Pennsylvania's great valley would be expensive and that given the experience building the Allegheny Portage Railroad, a similar work could be constructed along with Navigations through the Lehigh River Gorge.

This problem was solved by Josiah White who leased the operating rights and also formed the Lehigh Navigation Company and began to systematically put into place the original series of dams and locks and channel improvements of the navigation from Easton on the Delaware the 40 miles up to the Mauch Chunk Creek, outletting in area of today's Lehighton, which streamside trail was the easiest descent for the mule trains to reach the river about twelve miles from the Summit Hill and Lansford mines.

By 1824 the company was flush with cash, had been further improving the lower river with two way locks— and seeking other sources, began buying more coal lands and eventually bought lands around Hazleton and Ashley and the saddle shaped mountain pass above at Penobscot, Pennsylvania (now Mountain Top) above both south Wilkes-Barre on the Susquehanna and White Haven on the Lehigh at the head of the gorge.

Between November 1852 and September 1855 a railway line was built for the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, largely by Asa Packer's personal credit, from Mauch Chunk, later renamed Jim Thorpe, to Easton.

That same year a spark from a passing coal-fired steam locomotive ignited a massive forest fire that burned the debris, the remaining standing timber, the sawmills, and their lumber stockpiles.