Allentown Pennsylvania History & Facts

Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch: Allenschteddel, Allenschtadt, or Ellsdaun) is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The city had a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 census. It is the fastest-growing major city in Pennsylvania, the largest city in the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, and Pennsylvania's third largest city, behind only Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in total population. Allentown was founded in 1762 and is the county seat of Lehigh County.

Located on the Lehigh River, Allentown is the largest of three adjacent cities (Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton) in Lehigh and Northampton counties that join with Carbon County in Pennsylvania's Coal Region and Warren County in northwest New Jersey to form the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area. Allentown is approximately 48 miles (77 km) north-northwest of Philadelphia and 78 miles (126 km) west of New York City.

In the early 1700s, the land now occupied by the city of Allentown and Lehigh County was a wilderness of scrub oak where neighboring tribes of Native Americans fished for trout and hunted for deer, grouse, and other game. In 1736, a large area to the north of Philadelphia, embracing the present site of Allentown and what is now Lehigh County, was deeded by 23 chiefs of the five great Native American nations to three sons of William Penn: John, Thomas, and Richard Penn. The price for this tract included shoes and buckles, hats, shirts, knives, scissors, combs, needles, looking glasses, rum, and pipes.

The land that ultimately became Allentown was part of a 5,000-acre (20 km2) plot William Allen purchased on September 10, 1735 from his business partner Joseph Turner, who was assigned the warrant to the land by Thomas Penn on May 18, 1732.

The land was originally surveyed on November 23, 1736. A subsequent survey done in 1753 for a road from Easton to Reading shows the location of a log house owned by Allen, situated near the western bank of Jordan Creek, which was believed to have been built around 1740. Used primarily as a hunting and fishing lodge, Allen also used the log house to entertain prominent guests, including his brother-in-law James Hamilton and colonial Pennsylvania governor John Penn.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 18.0 square miles (46.6 km2) with 17.8 square miles (46.1 km2) of it being land and 0.2 square miles (0.5 km2) being water. Bodies of water include the Jordan Creek and its tributary, the Little Lehigh Creek, which join within the city limits and empty into the Lehigh River. Other bodies of water within the city limits include Lake Muhlenberg in Cedar Creek Parkway and a pond in Trexler Park.

Allentown is located in the Lehigh Valley, a geographic region bounded by Blue Mountain, a ridge of the Appalachian mountain range, which varies from 1,000 to 1,600 feet (490 m) in height about 17 miles (27 km) north of the city, and South Mountain, a ridge of 500 to 1,000 feet (300 m) in height that borders the southern edge of the city. Adjacent counties include Carbon County to the north, Northampton County to the northeast and east, Bucks County to the southeast, Montgomery County to the south, and Berks County and Schuylkill County to the west.

Famous Peoples From Allentown Pennsylvania

Amanda Michelle

Amanda Michelle Seyfried (born December 3, 1985) is an American actress, singer and model. She is the recipient of various accolades, including two Satellite Awards, a ShoWest Award, and nominations for an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award and a Saturn Award.

Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she began modeling at age eleven and ventured into acting at age 15 with recurring roles as Lucy Montgomery on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns (1999–2001) and Joni Stafford on the ABC soap opera All My Children (2003). Seyfried came to prominence following her feature film debut in the teen comedy Mean Girls (2004) and her recurring role as Lilly Kane on the UPN television series Veronica Mars (2004–2006) and Sarah Henrickson on the HBO drama series Big Love (2006–2011).

Seyfried has appeared in a number of successful films, including Mamma Mia! (2008) and its sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Jennifer's Body (2009), Chloe (2009), Dear John (2010), Letters to Juliet (2010), Red Riding Hood (2011), In Time (2011), Gone (2012), Lovelace (2013), A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), Ted 2 (2015), and First Reformed (2017). She has also occasionally done voice-over work in animation films, such as Epic (2013) and Scoob! (2020). In 2022, she portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu limited series The Dropout.

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