The "Switzerland of America": Lehigh Valley Railroad

In 1887, the Lehigh Valley Railroad commissioned this photographic celebration of its route through Pennsylvania's most dramatic terrain. The images by J. Murray Jordan capture a America on the cusp of transformation, where railroad tracks opened access to waterfalls, mountain curves, and university spires that had existed in solitude for millennia. The region had earned its nickname "Switzerland of America" for good reason: narrow valleys, tumbling falls, and steep ridges offered European-scale grandeur without the transatlantic crossing. The book presents the railroad not merely as infrastructure but as a key that unlocked wilderness for Victorian-era tourists hungry for the sublime. From the sweeping Musconetcong Curve to the thundering Onoko Falls, from Mauch Chunk's industrial energy to the grandeur of Niagara, Jordan's photographs document a moment when Americans were first learning to see and celebrate their own landscape. This is both a historical artifact of late 19th-century tourism and a window onto a world that would soon be reshaped by the very forces it documents.