Raubsville, a small village in Williams Township, Northampton County, was settled sometime in the mid-1700s by members of a Pennsylvania German family named Raub. The first member of the family to be listed in township population records is George Raub, in 1750.

Raubsville was nothing more than a small collection of houses and a tavern when the Delaware Canal opened in 1832. The first boatload of anthracite coal was delivered to Bristol that year, but the canal leaked so badly that it had to be closed for major repairs. Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company owners, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, gained control of the Delaware Canal from the state of Pennsylvania and immediately undertook engineering and construction renovations designed to make the canal operable and profitable.

One of the first renovations was the consolidation and widening of locks 23 and 24 at Raubsville. White and Hazard redesigned the lock system there by making one lock from two. It was named the Ground Hog Lock after a rapids in the Delaware River that paralleled the canal called Ground Hog Rift. Ground Hog Lock’s lift of 17.3 feet was the highest on the 60-mile system.

White and Hazard encouraged the development of industries that could use the water power of the canal. More industries along the canal meant more canal traffic and more profit for the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. Sometime before the start of the Civil War, a group of industries was built along the canal at Raubsville that included a sawmill, a distillery and, later, a paper mill.

The distillery was converted into a large paper mill by businessman Peter Uhler following the Civil War and was named the Raubsville Paper Company. It manufactured paper board from straw. Following a change in ownership, waxed tissue paper was made there. The company was sold and shut down several times until finally shutting down for good in 1928. In 1930, the paper plant was destroyed by fire.

A hydroelectric generating plant built at Ground Hog Lock in the early 1900s provided power for the paper company and the Philadelphia and Easton Transit Company, which operated a trolley line between the two cities. Pennsylvania Power and Light (PP&L) purchased the generating plant in 1928 and operated it until it was abandoned in 1954.