The new changing exhibits gallery at the National Canal Museum, Hugh Moore Park, Easton, features the inaugural exhibit, "The 'Untryed' Enterprise: Forging America's Industrial Independence," through Sept. 30.

The exhibit chronicles the beginning of the United State's Industrial Revolution in eastern Pennsylvania through a collection of artifacts, paintings, models and a video production based on the lives of entrepreneurs Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, the men responsible for the mining, transportation and industrial use of anthracite coal in the greater Lehigh Valley.

The exhibit is supported by the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, Inc., with funding provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The July 4 opening of the exhibit coincided with the 175th anniversary of the first casting of pig iron in North America in an anthracite-fueled hot-air blast furnace in 1840 at Lehigh Crane Iron Company, Biery's Bridge, now Catasauqua.

"This is an exciting exhibit to open our new room," said Dennis Scholl, D&L Director of Education and Museum Services. "Many historians view the event in Catasauqua as the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution. Once that first cast was made, the revolution was on and the Lehigh Valley was at its forefront."

The new room, which will also serve as a classroom and meeting room, was designed by Exhibit America of Nazareth.

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