The President Pumping Engine/Ueberroth Zinc Mine

Description:

This site is dedicated to preserving the history of zinc mining in the Center/Saucon Valley area of Upper Saucon Township. The village in the center of this zinc mining heritage is Friedensville. Here in the 1840s, the discovery of zinc-rich mineral deposits led to, along with concurrent developments in New Jersey, the first industrial-scale zinc extraction and processing enterprises in the United States. Groundbreaking and transformative technologies, like the President Pumping Engine, were employed to accomplish this task. When The President Engine commenced operation in January 1872, its 675 tons of iron and steel were able to draw 17,000 gallons of water out of the mine from a depth of 300 feet. The engine produced up to 3,000 horsepower and was the largest and most powerful single-cylinder rotative steam engine ever constructed anywhere in the world. The engine was scrapped in 1900, except for one of its boilers, which survives today in the basement of a shuttered furniture factory in Allentown, PA.

The mining activities in the Friedensville area continued, on and off, until 1984. Today, various remnants of this industry survive, and a movement is underway to preserve the central 19th-century mining location as an interpretive open-area museum and park.

Please contact us to arrange a private tour for your group!

NOTE: The site is unimproved and the property owner requires that tour participants sign a Wavier and Release of Liability form.