Welcome to Hugh Moore Park! In addition to being a lovely place to visit, the park has a fascinating history that this series of caches will explore.
In the river upstream of this cache, you can view the remnants of the Change Bridge in the Lehigh River, which connected the southern shore of the Lehigh with Island Park. At this point the Lehigh Canal switched from the north side of the Lehigh to the south, and the bridge allowed the mules (who pulled the canal boats) to cross the river. Constructed in 1857, it was a wire-rope cable suspension bridge with cables produced by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company’s wire-rope factory in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe). This factory was the first in the country to produce machine-made wire-rope. While only the overgrown central pier and some cables remain of the bridge, the cables are the only known surviving wire-rope from that factory.
Downstream from the Change Bridge is the Glendon Dam, known as the Chain Dam. The original dam, destroyed by ice in 1965, was constructed to back up the Lehigh River to create a slackwater pool deep enough for canal boats to make the crossing from the canal section on the northern side of the river to the one on the south (starting at Guard Lock #8). The dam also created a reliable source of water for the canal, even during dry summers. The current, very picturesque dam was constructed in 1974.
The cache is quite close to the trail. Depending on the season, please watch for poison ivy.
Cache is placed with the permission of the City of Easton's park manager.