“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.”
~ Jack Kerouac
~ 1922 ~ 1969
The Coplay Creek rambles in winter’s silent beauty beside the Ironton Rail Trail on a late February afternoon in Egypt, Pennsylvania, as the season inches toward spring – but it is winter still.
The Ironton Rail Trail loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township.
The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.
In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.
