South Tamaqua, Pennsylvania

Panther Creek is a two branch creek running through parts of Schuylkill and Carbon County. The west-draining branch tributary of the Little Schuylkill River's drainage basin and rises in the vicinity of the east side of Lansford and Coaldale in the plateau-like nearly flat terrain of the complex three-way saddle between Mount Pisgah. It continues to flow through the towns of Coaldale into Tamaqua where it meets the Little Schuylkill River. The Panther Creek branch to its east, Nesquehoning Ridge to the north and Pisgah Ridge to the south, both ridgelines flanking its entire course as it makes its way east-northeast to west-southwest. Starting in Nesquehoning it eventually runs into the Lehigh River just outside of Jim Thorpe. The creek's valley to the west is historically and industrially important having been mostly owned by the historically significant Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company which eventually built the Panther Creek Railroad from Lansford to Tamaqua and the Hauto Tunnel to haul coal from the copious anthracite deposits, collieries, and coal breakers along an easier route than up and over the mountains to Jim Thorpe and the Lehigh Canal via Summit Hill and the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railway, North America's second-oldest operational railroad and its first Gravity and Switchback railroads. The west branch of Panther Creek (Lansford/Coaldale) has been heavily polluted with acid mine drainage over the years and mysteriously has even gone dry in the last few months of 2024, which should not happen by any act of nature. While no care has ever been given to the high potential west branch of Panther Creek. Great care has gone into cleaning the acid mine drainage of the east branch of Panther Creek in Nesquehoning and it has turned into a prime trout fishery over the years as it makes its way to meet the Lehigh River. The coal seams of the valley were the first deposits discovered and exploited by any company beginning with surface deposits along the south ridge leading to the founding of Summit Hill, then Lansford in western Carbon County, then the downstream towns of Coaldale and Tamaqua in eastern Schuylkill County. The new company, a leaned-down and reorganized Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company still mines the coal deposits in the valley and owns all of its mineral rights.

The Tamaqua Historic District is a national historic district that is located in Schuylkill Township and Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

Rahn Township, Pennsylvania was a former Pennsylvania township created from the lightly populated former Penn Township of Schuylkill County, in eastern Pennsylvania. Rahn Township was in existence from 1788–1971 and was the governmental body of the less populated lands between today's boroughs of Tamaqua and Coaldale, and Bull Run now absorbed by their growth. Beginning in 1820, when anthracite coal deposits were being first exploited by the Lehigh Coal Mine Company and its successor Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (1818), the sections of lands of Penn Township that would become the future Rahn Township along the Carbon County border was the mining camp that would grow to become Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, where the early coal pits exploited were at and around the peak called Sharpe Mountain of Pisgah Ridge, the place where hunter Phillip Ginter had discovered the deposits in 1791. Sharpe Mountain today is a depression, as the LC&N Co. mined that place until well into the 1840s before they had to retreat down hill and drive shaft mines at Coaldale and Lansford.

Tamaqua (, Delaware: tëmakwe) is a borough in eastern Schuylkill County in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, United States. It had a population of 6,934 as of the 2020 U.S. census.Tamaqua was established from territory from West Penn and Schuylkill Townships. The borough is part of the micropolitan statistical area of Pottsville. Tamaqua is located 37.8 miles (60.8 km) northwest of Allentown, 87 miles (140 km) northwest of Philadelphia, and 125.5 miles (202.0 km) west of New York City.

The Tamaqua station is a historic railway station in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, that currently serves as a visitor center, restaurant, and boarding location for Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad excursion trains. It is part of the Tamaqua Historic District. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 26, 1985, as the Reading Railroad Passenger Station-Tamaqua.

The George Ormrod House is an historic home which is located in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

Anthracite Bank Building, also known as The Beard Building, is a historic former bank building located in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1850, and is a three-story, three bay wide, brick building in the Italianate style. The first floor exterior is white marble. It housed Tamaqua's first financial institution until 1865. The building later served as home of Civil War hero Col. Henry L. Cake and wife Eliza. Cake commanded the 96th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, rose to the rank of brigadier general, and later served as a member of the fortieth and forty-first U.S. Congress. For several years beginning in 2002, the building served as the Anthracite Inn Bed and Breakfast, operated by owner Donald Serfass. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Newkirk is an unincorporated community and coal town in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States, 1.4 miles south of Tamaqua.

Schuylkill Township is a township that is located in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. The population was 1,076 at the time of the 2020 census.

Reevesdale is an unincorporated community and coal town in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States, 2.6 miles south of Tamaqua.

Coaldale is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. Initially settled in 1827, it was incorporated in 1906 from part of the former Rahn Township; it is named for the coal industry—wherein, it was one of the principal early mining centers. Coaldale is in the southern Anthracite Coal region in the Panther Creek Valley, a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River, along which U.S. Route 209 was eventually built between the steep climb up Pisgah Mountain from Nesquehoning (easterly) and its outlet in Tamaqua, approximately five miles to the west. The town is virtually joined at the hip to nearby Lansford, to its immediate east—as both were founded as company towns on lands owned by and mined by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) while technically on opposite sides of the county lines. The history, business situation, and fortunes of not just the two, but of three towns, the third being the nearby Summit Hill, located a few thousand feet upslope, were tied in decades of co-development because the LC&N had built the western terminus of the nation's second railroad, the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Gravity Railway to ship coal out, and opened multiple mines throughout Coaldale and Lansford and the rest of the Panther Creek Valley in the days when railroads were coming into their own. The town has a bus stop with a mural on one side reading: "Everybody's Goal Is Mine More Coal" and the other side reading: "A Car More a Day Means More Pay". The area on the western border of the borough is known as Seek. There is a historical marker for Mother Jones located in Coaldale, as she organized many strikes and protests on behalf of coal miners around the country for improved pay, safer work environment and child labor laws. She organized a march for child workers that started in Coaldale and proceeded to McAdoo. At one trial for Mary Jones, a prosecution lawyer famously said, "there sits the most dangerous woman in America... to put down their tools and walk out". Herbert Whildin was elected mayor in 2017.

Hometown is a village (a neighborhood, and now a census-designated place (CDP) once having a post office) in Rush Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States that sits astride a crossing point between important transportation corridors. The population was 1,399 at the 2000 census, and excepting for the area near the east–west PA 54 running mostly parallel to the tracks of the Reading, Blue Mountain, and Northern Railroad — once the important east-west shortline Nesquehoning & Mahanoy Railroad — and the PA 54 junction with PA 309.