Carbon County History

• Elected in 1841 to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Asa Packer quietly introduced a bill to separate Carbon County from Northampton County.

For 30 years, various groups and legislators had intermittently tried to persuade the state Legislature to separate Carbon from Northampton and Monroe counties.

• Between 1837 and 1843, petitions were presented to the Legislature for separation every year, only to be met with rejection or silence.

But Packer had wealth, prestige and political clout. Packer had both a personal and civic interest in getting this bill passed. He had invested heavily Mauch Chunk and the surrounding area.

Mauch Chunk was not only his home, it was the center of his industrial empire. Packer realized if Carbon became a separate county with Mauch Chunk as its new county seat, his business prospects and his property values would escalate.

• On March 13, 1843, Pa. Gov. David Rittenhouse Porter signed the historic act which made the County of Carbon a separate and independent county, carved out of sections of Northampton and Monroe counties.

• The Act of March 13, 1843, also provided for the formation of the Carbon County Court system. Section 9 of the act specified that after the first day of September, Carbon County shall be entitled to have all and singular rights to the courts, jurisdictions, offices and privileges entitled by the Constitution and laws of the commonwealth.

• Gov. Porter appointed Nathaniel B. Eldred as the first president judge over the 12th Judicial District. Associate judges were Packer and Jacob Dinkey.

• Section 10 of the act annexed Carbon County to the 12th Judicial District, which at that time comprised Dauphin, Schuylkill and Lebanon counties.

• Carbon County’s first court session took place on Monday, Dec. 18, 1843, in the refurbished LC & N Company building located on the northeast corner of Susquehanna and Broadway in Mauch Chunk.

• During the summer months of 1843, contractors refurbished and transformed the “Old Store” into Carbon County’s first courthouse.

The first floor housed the county row offices, and the courtroom was located on the second floor.

• On July 15, 1849, a devastating fire left the courthouse, and a jail located in a smaller building behind it, in ashes, prompting the construction of a new courthouse and office building in 1850 with 45 feet of frontage on Broadway and 6 feet of frontage on Susquehanna Street.

Judge Eldred convened court for the first time in Courthouse II on Dec. 30, 1850, and it remained in use until March 29, 1893, when Judge Samuel Dreher conducted the last proceedings there.

• While demolition of Courthouse II and the adjoining building proceeded, court and court-related offices were temporarily moved to the second, third and fourth floors of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Building (now called the LC&N Company or Navigation Building).

• Construction of Courthouse III, the current building, began on April 27, 1893. The construction contract totaled $81,250. The final costs totaled $125,000.

• Plans for Courtroom No. 2 were started in 1980 when the third floor of the courthouse was renovated.

The commissioners conducted weekly meetings there for 12 years before Judge Richard W. Webb took office in 1992 and the room became his official courtroom.

A third courtroom was built in 2009.

• Carbon County had 19 jurists, including those whose photos are prominently displayed along the front walls of the courtroom. They include the late James C. McCready (12th), 1940-60; the late Albert Heimbach (13th), 1960-78; the late John P. Lavelle (14th), 1978-2001, the late Richard W. Webb (15th), 1992-2004

Also Roger N. Nanovic (16th), 2001 to present, the late David Addy (17th), 2006-2009. Steven Serfass (18th), 2010 to present, and Joseph J. Matika (19th), 2012 to present.

• Carbon County has had 97 commissioners. They include: James Walker, 1964-75; John W. “Bud” Angst, 1968-1971 and 1977-1983; Albert U. “Brady” Koch, 1968-1991, the longest serving commissioner in the history with a total of 24 years; Charles E. Wildoner, 1972-1987 and 1991.

Also Howard Krill, 1976-1977; Dean D.W. DeLong, 1984-95; The late Luther Getz, 1988-1991; Tom Gerhard Sr., 1992-2003; John Mogilski, 1992-1999; Charles Getz, 1996-2011; Wayne E. Nothstein, 2000-present; William O’Gurek, 2004-present; and Tom Gerhard, 2012-present.

• As of the 2010 census, Carbon County had a population of 65,249 people. Its county seat, Jim Thorpe, was founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk, the company town of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company as it built a wagon road 9 miles to its coal mine at today’s Summit Hill, and constructed the Lehigh Canal navigations.

• In 1827, that wagon road became the nation’s second operating railroad, the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad, regarded as the world’s first roller coaster, which became its main function between 1873—1931.

The area around Mauch Chunk was known as the “Switzerland of America,” the long wide slack water pool above the Lehigh’s upper dam being surrounded by Mauch Chunk Ridge, Bear Mountain, Pisgah Ridge, Mount Pisgah, Nesquehoning Ridge, Broad Mountain and their various prominences and summits.

• Today, Carbon County is included in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton-New Jersey metropolitan Statistical Area.

It is part of the state’s Coal Region, though the eastern and northeastern sections are considered part of the Pocono Mountains, since they are east of the Lehigh River, the demarcation separating the similar mountain ridge and valley system.

— Facts were presented by Commissioner William O’Gurek, taken from Judge John P. Lavelle’s “The Hard Coal Docket” and other research.