Residents of Northampton County like to say their county, located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, is the kind of place where everyone can feel at home; just as the 18th-century travelers to Northampton County were welcomed by innkeepers and tavern owners, today’s travelers find inns, hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, camp grounds and restaurants.
Founded in 1752, Northampton County is located 60 miles north of Philadelphia and 80 miles west of New York City; its population numbers more than 280,000.
Northampton County has been one of the larger and most economically-important counties in Pennsylvania, occupying a strategic location at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. Pennsylvania’s canal system brought anthracite coal and iron ore to the emerging iron industry. The production of iron, steel and Portland cement made Northampton County one of the most important industrial centers in America.
In 1838, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, the owners of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, traveled to South Wales to meet David Thomas and invest in his new furnace idea. Thomas’ invention, burning anthracite in an iron furnace, sparked a revolution in American industry. The founders of what eventually became Bethlehem Steel – Asa Packer, Robert Sayre and John Fritz – started their first iron foundry, the Bethlehem Iron Company, at a railroad junction on the south bank of the Lehigh in 1840; their small iron-making business rapidly transformed the county and all of the Lehigh Valley into the steel making capital of the world.
Soon after the success of the steel foundry, another impressive industry developed in Northampton County. The process of making Portland cement — mixing limestone, clay, shale, magnesium, and other chemical additives — was discovered in England in 1890. Entrepreneurs discovered that there is something inherent in the limestone in the Lehigh Valley which is conducive to making Portland cement, where other, similar limestone fails at the job.
Northampton County’s premiere musical event, “Musikfest – America’s Music Festival” takes place each August for ten days and nights. During this time, thirteen separate venues, as well as the streets of Bethlehem, are filled with music of every style played for one million music-loving guests from all across America.
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