The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad company in the northeastern United States primarily used to haul anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania, to Easton, Pennsylvania. The railroad was incorporated on April 21, 1846, in Pennsylvania as the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, and Susquehanna Railroad Company. Following decades of growth and geographic expansion, the railroad began transporting additional forms of cargo, including human passengers. On January 7, 1853, the railroad was renamed the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

In 1867 the Lehigh Valley Railroad completed an extension into the Wyoming Coal Field at Wilkes-Barre. Packer purchased the flood-damaged North Branch Canal in 1865 and completed a railroad on its towpath from Wilkes-Barre to Waverly, New York, in 1869, connecting with the Erie Railway to Buffalo and developing a market for coal in the cities of the Great Lakes.

In 1871 the Lehigh Valley Railroad began planning its own route from Easton to New York Harbor. It purchased the Morris Canal primarily to obtain valuable terminal properties in Jersey City. In 1875 the Easton & Amboy was completed to a coal terminal at Perth Amboy. An extension to Jersey City was not completed until the early 1890s.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the Lehigh Valley Railroad secured control over a group of railroads in central New York State, extending its reach to Ithaca, Auburn, and Geneva and to North Fair Haven on Lake Ontario, whence coal was shipped to Toronto and other Canadian cities. The Lehigh Valley Railroad completed its own line to the Buffalo gateway in 1892.

Many of the Lehigh Valley Railroad's predecessor companies in the coal regions also had mining privileges. Between 1867 and 1875, the company greatly increased its acreage of coal lands and leases in the Lehigh, Mahanoy, and Wyoming Coal Fields. Most operations were centralized under the subsidiary Lehigh Valley Coal Company, which was the second-largest anthracite mining firm at the time. In the early 1920s, the railroad relinquished control of the coal subsidiaries following government prosecution of the anthracite railroads under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Hepburn Act. The company also owned a fleet of ships operating on the Great Lakes, which it disposed of in 1917 under the provisions of the Panama Canal Act.

The banker and financier J.P Morgan (1837-1913) acquired control of the Lehigh Valley Railroad from the Packer heirs in 1897 to reorganize the anthracite roads. With the breakup of the coal trust and the growth of the railroad consolidation movement in the 1920s, Leonor F. Loree (1858-1940) of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad attempted to buy the Lehigh Valley Railroad for inclusion in his proposed fifth eastern system in 1927. Failing in the attempt, he sold his substantial minority interest to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1928. The Pennsylvania Railroad made no attempt to absorb the Lehigh Valley Railroad but held the stock to keep the company out of unfriendly hands.

The company suffered from the collapse of the anthracite industry that began in the late 1920s and accelerated after 1945. The Lehigh Valley Railroad was one of the first large railroads to eliminate all passenger service in 1961. In 1962 the Pennsylvania Railroad increased its interest in the Lehigh Valley Railroad to ninety percent, but it could not provide any meaningful support. With the failure of Penn Central, the Lehigh Valley Railroad entered bankruptcy on June 24, 1970. The viable parts of the line east of Waverly were sold to Conrail on April 1, 1976, and the rest were abandoned. A reorganization plan was approved on July 16, 1982, under which the company was liquidated by sale and distribution of assets.