Lehigh, former Oklahoma Coal city

Lehigh was a busy coal-mining town in Coal County, Indian Territory that sat along the aptly-named Coal Creek (USGS, 1900).

At the turn of the 20th century, the town of Lehigh in Coal County, Indian Territory (now, of course, Oklahoma) was really something. Named after a coal-mining district in Pennsylvania, Lehigh lived up to its namesake with abundant coal seams found in 1877. Eventually, the Choctaw Nation's coal mining country included mines around McAlester, Pittsburg, and Wilburton. Lehigh became a city as miners (Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks, as well as immigrating miners from Italy, England, and Mexico) retrieved carbon from the ground and made the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway even wealthier.

Mining and disasters go hand-in-hand. The largest mine disaster occurred in late February of 1912, when ten miners were killed in the Western Coal and Mining Company's Shaft No. 5. By then, workers had unionized for better wages and safer working conditions. Their activism influenced the state's labor commissioner Jim Hughes, who held office from 1947 to 1963 and who championed wage increases and equal pay for women. Born in Lehigh, his father was killed in a mining disaster in 1904 and he mined coal himself but said, "If I had stayed in the coal mines, I would have been dead many years ago."

In February of 1912, ten miners died when Mine No. 5 collapsed/ burned at Lehigh, Coal County, Indian Territory.

By 1905, Lehigh boasted three railroads and was gearing up for connections throughout the southwest. It had a newspaper, two well-capitalized banks, an opera house, and a thriving business district around Main, Railway, and Olive streets. The King-of-Trails Highway, which we call U.S. 75 today, cut through town to link it to Topeka and Dallas.

Lehigh's hopes of becoming another Denison (the crown jewel of the MKT railway in Grayson County, Texas) did not pan out. Railroads abandoned coal in favor of oil to power their locomotives, which was cheaper to obtain in an industry where workers did not unionize. By 1960, the town was considered "disappeared."

Lehigh, Coal County, Oklahoma's devolution is truly insane. Today, only bits and pieces of Lehigh remain. Along the King of Trails Highway (US 75) is the fire department and the town's little city hall, and the lonely Merchant National Bank building, once home to the Lehigh Historical Society which I don't believe is functioning much anymore, stands at Main Street and the former railroad tracks. But when driving through here today, you'd NEVER be able to guess that this place was once known as the "cultural center of Indian Territory."

Bye, Lehigh.

The Daily Oklahoman documented the "disappeared" town of Lehigh, Coal County, Oklahoma for an article in 1987. This photograph was taken along Main Street looking east (OHS).

The Merchants National Bank erected their sturdy building in 1907 at the southwest corner of Main Railway streets, replacing an earlier general store. The building still stands, a lone remnant of this once-vibrant town of miners and farmers. In 1987, the building became home to the Lehigh Historical Society, but I'm unsure if this organization still exists.

The corner of Railway and Main streets in downtown Lehigh, Coal County, Indian Territory had plenty of stores and other attractions in 1902 (Clarkson Insurance Map, OHS).

7 Mine No. 5 in 1905, which saw the mining disaster of 1912 in Lehigh, Coal County, Indian Territory.

The 1918 Sanborn map of Lehigh, Coal County, Oklahoma shows a prosperous town along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas's tracks.

y 2023, the whole downtown of Lehigh (Coal County, Oklahoma) is nearly gone! Only the bank building at the corner of Railway and Main Street remains. And where the heck is Oak Street (see Sanborn map from 1918)?

What may be a miner's cabin in Lehigh, Coal County, Oklahoma, which I photographed in 2017.