Located in Eastern Pennsylvania, spanning both Northampton and Leigh Counties, in between Allentown and Easton lays the quaint town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As a city known for its rich colonial and industrial history, Bethlehem is experiencing an economic and cultural renaissance that promises a future as great as the city’s past.
Founded on Christmas Eve in 1741 and named after the town of Bethlehem in Judea when two settlers, David Nitschmann and Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, were leading a small group of Moravian Protestants along the banks of the Lehigh River and Monocacy Creek. Until the 1850s, the town was originally a typical Moravian Settlement Congregation in which only members of the Moravian Church were permitted to live. During the Industrial Revolution, in the early 1900s, Bethlehem became a center of heavy industry and trade. Founded in 1904, Bethlehem steel would produce the first wide-flange structural shapes made in America. In addition to becoming a major supplier of armor plate and weapon products during both World War I and World War II, Bethlehem steel was also the first to produce the ubiquitous “I-beam.” Bethlehem’s business directory will provide you with further places of industries that are still prevailing today.