Formed February 16, 1813; Scriptural name, from the cedar trees covering the range of mountains on northern boundary, “Cedars of Lebanon”; settled by Germans in the east, by the Scotch-Irish in the west. Leading industries, agriculture, iron, tobacco. Three solid hills of rich, magnetic iron ore have been worked for over 170 years, and still seem inexhaustible; they require no mining, simply to be quarried; down to the present these mines have produced more iron ore than any other single iron ore property in the United States. In 1737, Peter Grubb became sole owner of these ore hills; he built Hopewell forge on Hammer Creek, and the large blast furnace was named for Cornwall, his ancestral home in England. The property was inherited by his two sons, who were colonels in the Revolutionary War; cannon balls and stoves were cast here for the Continental Army. In 1798, Robert Coleman purchased five-sixths of these ore banks; they were near the old road between Harris Ferry and Philadelphia, known as the Berks and Dauphin Road. Later his grandsons, Robert and G. Dawson Coleman, built furnaces on the Union Canal, then the great means of transportation; by that time charcoal furnaces were going out. The construction and operation of the Union Canal through this county, connecting the Schuylkill River at Reading with the Susquehanna at Middletown, was a [Illustration: LEBANON COUNTY] [Illustration: THE OLDEST CANAL TUNNEL IN THE UNITED STATES North Lebanon] momentous event, with its tunnel 767 feet long, first in the United States. Extract: “Lebanon, June 15, 1827. Last Monday evening, June 11th, the citizens of this town and vicinity had the privilege of seeing the first boat, the _Alpha_ from Tulpehocken, come up the Union Canal and remain at North Lebanon for the night; the next morning it continued its journey westward and passed through the tunnel; this was the first boat to pass through a tract of ground upon which corn and potatoes were being grown.”