Mountain Top Yard

It was built by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) in response to an 1837 bill authorizing a right of way and was established by 1840, at least as a construction camp for the Ashley Planes, in support of the construction of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad trackage and operations to join the northern Anthracite Coal Region from barge loading docks along the Susquehanna (above and below the Navigations of the Pennsylvania Canal) in Pittston, in the Wyoming Valley, with the Lehigh Canal.

Penobscot Knob or Mount Penobscot, looming above the local terrain, was one of the last terrain obstacles to north-south travel — following after several barrier ranges in the ridge-and-valley Appalachians above the improvements to the Lehigh River, allowing water transport over 80 miles inland from Philadelphia's piers — a barrier therefore preventing west to east shipping of coal in the fading days of the canal era, but one in which railroad technology was leaping ahead year by year.

The Lehigh Valley was primarily first and foremost a coal road which transported high-grade Anthracite to the big cities of the east and to steel mills along the Great Lakes and to the area in and around Chicago.

Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, is a railroad town once named Penobscot,[1] built beside the yard to house its employees and those of the nearby mines.

The town is located at 41°8′7″N 75°54′16″W / 41.13528°N 75.90444°W / 41.13528; -75.90444 (41.1353022, -75.9044749) in the shadow of Mount Penobscot (or Penobscot Knob) and is located in the saddle-shaped mountain pass atop the ridgeline between the Susquehanna River basin to the north and west and the Lehigh River basin to the east and south, so sits astride an important land communications corridor bridging the two watersheds below.