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Lehigh County, PA
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Created on March 6, 1812, from part of Northampton
County and named for the Lehigh River. The name Lehigh
is derived from the German “Lecha,” which comes from the
Native American term “Uchauwekink,” meaning, “where
there are forks.” Allentown, the county seat, was laid
out about 1762 and named for Chief Justice William Allen
of Pennsylvania, a local landowner. It was incorporated
as the Borough of Northampton on March 18, 1811, renamed
Allentown in 1838, and chartered as a city on March 12,
1867. The county adopted a home rule charter in November
1975.
 Although
English, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh were in the Saucon
Township area before 1729, large numbers of Swiss and
Germans came to the Lehigh Valley after that.
Philadelphians allied with the Penn proprietors received
large grants and sold them to settlers. Allentown was
designed to take advantage of the road to Reading. Canal
development in the 1820s preceded the growth of
industry. Railroads arrived in the 1840s, and Allentown
grew large in the 1850s. Small iron furnaces using local
ore flourished until phased out by competition
elsewhere. By the late nineteenth century the slate
industry, grain milling, and the manufacture of shoes,
cotton, woolens, silk, cigars, beer, and cement were
major enterprises, but each has been overcome by
competitors elsewhere since the 1930s. Machinery
manufacture was dominant until the deindustrialization
period of the 1970s. Forty-three percent of the land is
farmed, and the value of harvested crops exceeds that of
animal products. Lehigh is in the top quarter of the
counties in total farm income. |
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