Travel the D&L Corridor between Jim Thorpe and Easton and you’ll notice a distinct change in land’s character. The thickly-wooded, mountainous terrain gives way to a pastoral landscape. Mines, breakers, patch towns and other telltale signs of the coal industry are replaced by covered bridges, mid-18th-century German villages, elegant Victorian houses, and the rolling fields of Pennsylvania German farms. The land here is productive, but in a different way.
You’re now in the Lehigh Valley, the heart of “where America was built”. Cities and industry grow here, both past and present. The Lehigh Valley was the center of our economic strength. Slate, zinc and limestone for cement were processed here, while iron and steel dominated local economies and impacted events around the world.
This impact created distinctly different industrial and cultural communities, such as Walnutport and Slatington, which existed purely because of the Lehigh Canal and railroads. A bit farther south, the region’s three largest cities - Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton-became the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution, in large part because of the Lehigh and Delaware Canals.
Lehigh Valley towns and cities have distinct histories, but it’s all one big landscape where the urban, agricultural and natural lands can be found alongside the trails, river and canal all linked by a transport route that started in the mountains and fueled dramatic change on its way to market.
