Everyone is very familiar with the Lehigh Valley flag emblem. But I have only one secondary source that states it was created in 1890. It apparently was about that time that the Lehigh Valley got into the maritime business with a fleet of tugs and barges in New York harbor. However, they also had a fleet of package freighters/passenger vessels on the Great Lakes. Since this emblem was the trademark of the LV so long, it would be interesting to know more about it.
I think this is probably one of those bits of LV lore that has been "lost to history"..
Someone once knew when the LV flag was first created..People were there when it happened!
But sometime between then and now, that information has been lost to us, 140 years later.
The information is probably still out there somewhere, locked away in museum documents somewhere..the trick is finding it again.
LV had maritime operations: tugs, barges and ships, in three locations:
1.) Fair Haven, began maritime operations in 1872, the year coal was first loaded into lake freighters there.
And the Southern Central owned a tugboat at Fair Haven in 1872 called the A.J. Hoole.
2.) The first LV New York City area harbor operations were in 1875.
3.) Tifft Terminal maritime operations began in 1881. (even though the LV mainline didnt get there until 1892!
quote from my LV maritime webpage, which still has not seen the light of day:
But even before the LV reached Buffalo on its own rails in 1892, it had already purchased and developed harbor facilities in Buffalo, for the shipment of coal via Great Lakes steam ships.So LV maritime operations date from the 1870's..
In 1881 the LV organized the "Lehigh Valley Transportation Company", which immediately began to build a fleet of lake steamers for the purpose of transporting coal, grain, and other freight from Buffalo out to other Great Lakes port cities, such as Chicago, Duluth, Milwaukee and other cities. The steam freighters acted as an extension of the railroad. Coal and other freight could travel via rail to Buffalo, then transfer to the LV lake freighters for shipment further west into the Great Lakes industrial region. Or travel the other way, by "sea" to Buffalo, then by rail to the east coast markets.
The first four ships were of wood construction, commissioned in 1881, and were named:
the Robert A. Packer
the Oceanica
the Clyde
the Tacoma
Business was so good that two more ships were added a year later, in 1882:
the Harry E. Packer
the Fred Mercur
Making a total of six wood ships in the fleet.
The wood steamers were retired between 1900 and 1911.
None of this answers the question about the flag logo however!
Im just putting the dates out there to get the ball rolling..
Scot
