“Fancy
meeting you here!”
~ an amiable greeting, often when one is
surprised to see someone
A
white-tailed deer doe and a man bicycling are surprised to be in each other’s
paths on a beautiful late June evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which
loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay
and North Whitehall Township in Pennsylvania.
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.
