owners of the Lehigh mines, and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of twenty years at an annual rental of one ear of corn.</ref> The company is known in the Lehigh Valley as the "Old Company", as distinct from the later 1988–2010 company: the nearly same named Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, the "New Company", to the people of the region. Development In 1792, a hunter named Philip Ginter discovered coal in the region on Sharpe Mountain— on Pisgah Ridge near today's Summit Hill close to the border between Schuylkill and Carbon counties. The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded the following year, but management proved weak and tried to operate in an absentee mode. Company personnel attempted to trek to the mine site, dig the coal, use mules to bring bags of it to the Lehigh River, n cut down trees and build crude arks near Lausanne Landing and then shoot the rapids of the Lehigh River, hoping to reach the Delaware River. The Lehigh Coal Mining Company was sporadically successfully in getting anthracite coal to Philadelphia and its rights were eventually absorbed by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which leased their own operational rights from their predecessor, the Lehigh Coal Company. Lehigh Coal Mine Company The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded in 1792 (incorporated 1793) with enough money to buy in and around the Panther Creek Valley and along Pisgah Mountain, and the aim of hauling anthracite coal from the large deposits on Pisgah Mountain near what is now Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia via mule train to arks built near Lausanne on the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. The mining camps were over nine miles from the Lehigh River at Mauch Chunk. Sporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could mine to fuel-hungry markets but lost many a boatload on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River, contributing to lost operating profits for the company and sometimes outright losses.<ref name=HoCC-594>Brenckman's History of Carbon County, pp. 594: The task which Josiah White and Erskine Hazard undertook, that of making the Lehigh a navigable stream, was one which had before been several times attempted, and as often abandoned as too expensive and difficult to be successfully carried out. The Legislature was early aware of the importance of