“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
~ William Shakespeare
~ 1564 ~1616
Its summer’s last splash as the silky, cascading waters of Smith Falls along the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain, glisten in the early evening sun on the last weekend of summer, my most favorite of seasons – oh that it would last longer! I shot this long exposure capture September 18, 2021 at Lehigh Gap along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail).
The Lehigh Gap in Slatington, Pennsylvania, is a crossroads where the Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s trails connect two historic trails – the Appalachian Trail and the D&L Trail.
Smith Falls is one of the Five Falls at East Penn along a unique area of the D&L Trail.
Railroading has a rich history in the development of lower Carbon County as three railroads went through the Lehigh Gap.
East Penn Township had two of them on its side of the river as the Lehigh Valley Railroad ran along what is now the D&L Trail. The Lehigh and New England Railroad ran parallel about 75 feet higher on the mountain on what is now the Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s Bobolink Trail.
The engineering needed to build these railroads would be a wonder today, but when you consider that they were done a century ago it becomes more impressive. They built pools along the railroad to collect runoff similar to what we now have as detention basins.
These pools still collect water and they discharge the collected water at five waterfalls that can be observed year round when hiking or biking the D&L Trail.
The Appalachian Trail, a foot path, follows the ridge on both sides of the Lehigh Gap, running 1,245 miles south to Georgia and 930 miles north to Maine. Running from Wilkes-Barre to Bristol, the D&L Trail passes through the Lehigh and Delaware rivers and their canals in Pennsylvania.
