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About Allentown

Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch: Allenschteddel, Allenschtadt, or Ellsdaun) is a city in Pennsylvania and the county seat of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the third-most-populous city in Pennsylvania with a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 census and the most populous city in the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, which had a population of 861,899 and was the 68th-most populous metropolitan area in the nation as of 2020.Founded in 1762, Allentown is located on the Lehigh River, a 109-mile-long (175 km) tributary of the Delaware River. It is the largest of three adjacent cities, including Bethlehem and Easton in Lehigh and Northampton counties, in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. Allentown is located 48 miles (77 km) north of Philadelphia and 78 miles (126 km) west of New York City. == History == === 18th century === In the early 1700s, the area that is present-day Allentown was a wilderness of scrub oak, where the Lenape, a Native American tribe, fished for trout and hunted for deer, grouse, and other game. In 1736, this large area north of Philadelphia was deeded by 23 chiefs of the Five Civilized Tribes to three sons of William Penn, founder of the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania: John Penn, Thomas Penn, and Richard Penn. The price for the land included shoes, buckles, hats, shirts, knives, scissors, combs, needles, looking glasses, rum, and pipes.On May 18, 1732, the land was deeded by Thomas Penn to Joseph Turner, an iron manufacturer and politician from Philadelphia. Two years later, on September 10, 1735, a 5,000-acre (20 km2) part of the land was purchased from Turner's business partner by William Allen, a wealthy shipping merchant and former mayor of Philadelphia.The land was surveyed in 1736 and again in 1753 as part of an effort to construct a road from Easton in the east to Reading in the west. The 1753 survey reported that a log house, owned by Allen and built around 1740, existed near the western banks of Jordan Creek. The house was used primarily as a hunting and fishing lodge by Allen, but he also used it to entertain prominent guests, including James Hamilton, his brother-in-law, and John Penn, then governor of the Province of Pennsylvania.