Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Based on Wikipedia: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

On Christmas Eve in 1741, a small band of German-speaking religious refugees stood at the junction of two Pennsylvania creeks and christened their new settlement after the birthplace of Jesus. Nearly two centuries later, this same town would become the beating heart of American industrial might, forging the steel beams that built Manhattan's skyline and the warships that won World War II. Today, where blast furnaces once roared, slot machines chime in a casino resort. This is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—a city whose improbable journey from Moravian mission to steel colossus to entertainment destination tells the story of America itself.

The Moravians Arrive

To understand Bethlehem, you first need to understand the Moravians. The Moravian Church traces its origins to Jan Hus, a Czech priest who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415—a full century before Martin Luther nailed his famous theses to a church door. The Moravians were proto-Protestants, religious reformers before the Reformation had a name.

By the 1700s, persecuted across Europe, many Moravians had found refuge on the estates of Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf, a German nobleman with a passion for ecumenical Christianity. Zinzendorf dreamed of building communities where devout Christians could live, work, and worship together while spreading their faith to others. America, with its promise of religious freedom and its vast populations of unchurched settlers and Native Americans, seemed the perfect place to realize this vision.

The land came courtesy of William Allen, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who would later found the neighboring city that bears his name. In April 1741, Allen deeded five hundred acres along the Monocacy Creek and Lehigh River to the Moravian Church. That December, Zinzendorf himself led the founding party to the site.

"Brothers, how more fittingly could we call our new home than to name it in honor of the spot where the event we now commemorate took place. We will call this place Bethlehem."

And so, on Christmas Eve, Bethlehem was born.

A Communal Experiment

Early Bethlehem operated unlike any other colonial settlement. The Moravians established what they called a "Settlement Congregation"—essentially a religious commune where the church owned all property and residents lived according to their station in life. There were separate dormitories for single men (the Brethren's House), single women (the Sisters' House), and widows (the Widows' House). Married couples lived in the Congregation House. These buildings still stand in historic Bethlehem, stone testaments to a communal way of life that seems almost utopian by modern standards.

The settlement was remarkably industrious. By the late 1700s, Bethlehem had established grist mills and sawmills—essential infrastructure for any growing community. But the town's most impressive technological achievement came in 1762, when Bethlehem built the first waterworks in America designed to pump water for public use. This was decades before Philadelphia or New York would have anything comparable. The Moravians, it turned out, were as skilled at engineering as they were devoted to prayer.

The community's missionary work extended to the Lenape people, the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who had inhabited this region for centuries before European contact. The Lenape were not a single tribe but rather a confederation of peoples who spoke three main dialects: Unami, Unalachtigo, and Munsee. They had already been trading with Dutch and British colonists for generations when the Moravians arrived.

The Moravian approach to conversion was, by colonial standards, unusually respectful. Converted Lenape were buried alongside Moravian settlers in the community cemetery, known as God's Acre—a radical statement of spiritual equality in an era when most European colonists viewed Native Americans as irredeemably "other."

Revolution Comes to Bethlehem

The autumn of 1777 was a desperate time for the American cause. The British had captured Philadelphia, forcing the Continental Congress to flee. Many patriots headed north to Bethlehem and its surrounding communities.

The Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat who had crossed an ocean to fight for American liberty, recuperated in Bethlehem from wounds received at the Battle of Brandywine. The guest register at the Moravian Sun Inn tells the story of one remarkable night: on September 22, 1777, fourteen of the fifty-six delegates to the Second Continental Congress signed in and stayed overnight. Among Bethlehem's Revolutionary-era visitors were George Washington and his wife Martha, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, and Lafayette.

Washington even stored his personal effects at a local farm—the James Burnside farm on Schoenersville Road, which now operates as a historical museum called the James Burnside Plantation.

The Moravians' pacifist beliefs put them in a complicated position during the Revolution. They did not take up arms, yet their community served as a refuge and way station for the patriot leadership. It was an early demonstration of Bethlehem's knack for being at the center of American history without quite meaning to be.

From Religious Community to American City

The communal experiment could not last forever. By the mid-1800s, Bethlehem was transitioning from religious settlement to conventional American town. In 1845, it was incorporated as a borough in Northampton County. Three years later, following a decision by the Moravian Church's Unity Synod, Bethlehem became the headquarters of the Northern Province of the Moravian Church in North America—a distinction it holds to this day.

The religious restrictions on land ownership gradually loosened. Until the 1850s, only Moravian Church members could lease land in Bethlehem. This exclusivity had kept the community tight-knit but also small. Once outsiders could own property, growth accelerated.

After the Civil War, the area around Bethlehem fragmented into multiple competing jurisdictions. The Borough of South Bethlehem was formed in 1865, West Bethlehem in Lehigh County followed in 1886, and Northampton Heights was incorporated in 1901. For a time, Bethlehem was actually four separate municipalities, each with its own government and its own aspirations.

The consolidation was contentious. South Bethlehem, which had become the industrial powerhouse of the region, attempted to incorporate as its own independent city in 1913. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania struck down this incorporation as unconstitutional, and in 1917, South Bethlehem was annexed into the newly consolidated City of Bethlehem. Northampton Heights held out until 1920, when it too was absorbed—though not before floating a failed proposal to merge with neighboring Hellertown and form a rival city.

The first mayor of the consolidated city was Archibald Johnston, an executive at the company that had made this industrial center worth fighting over: Bethlehem Steel.

The Steel Colossus

Bethlehem Steel was founded in 1857, and over the following century it would grow into the second-largest steel producer in the United States, surpassed only by U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh. At its peak, the company employed over thirty thousand workers at its Bethlehem plant alone.

The company's innovations reshaped the American landscape. Bethlehem Steel pioneered the production of wide-flange structural shapes—most famously, the I-beam. If you have ever looked up at a skyscraper under construction and seen those distinctive cross-sectioned steel columns, you are looking at Bethlehem's legacy. The I-beam made modern steel-frame construction possible, enabling buildings to soar to previously unimaginable heights.

The company's steel went into the bones of New York City. The Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge—Bethlehem Steel supplied the materials that made these icons possible. When you stand in midtown Manhattan and crane your neck at the towers overhead, you are, in a sense, looking at Pennsylvania.

But steel was only half the story. Bethlehem Steel was also one of the largest shipbuilding companies in the world. During World War II, the company manufactured over eleven hundred warships for the United States Navy. In both World Wars, Bethlehem was a major supplier of armor plate and ordnance. The company did not just build America's cities; it armed America's military.

For workers, Bethlehem Steel offered a path to the middle class. The jobs were dangerous and exhausting—steel mills are infernally hot places where molten metal flows and heavy machinery crushes the unwary. But the pay was good, the union was strong, and a man (it was almost always men) could raise a family on a steelworker's wages. For generations of immigrants and their descendants, the mill was the ladder out of poverty.

The Collapse

The decline of Bethlehem Steel mirrored the decline of American heavy industry more broadly. After roughly a hundred and forty years of metal production in Bethlehem, the company ceased operations at its hometown plant in 1995. Foreign competition, particularly from Japan and South Korea, had undercut American steelmakers. Demand was declining. The company that had once symbolized American industrial supremacy could not adapt quickly enough to a changing world.

The liquidation was completed in 2003. Just like that, one of the most powerful symbols of American manufacturing was gone.

What remained was a brownfield—a vast industrial site, contaminated and abandoned, stretching along the Lehigh River. The blast furnaces still stood, rusting monuments to a vanished era. For years, the question hung over Bethlehem: what do you do with the corpse of a steel mill?

Rebirth as Entertainment Destination

The answer, improbably, was a casino.

In December 2006, Las Vegas Sands Corporation was awarded a slot machine license by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. The company began work on what was then the largest brownfield redevelopment project in the nation and the largest casino development investment in Pennsylvania history. The projected cost was seven hundred forty-three million dollars.

The vision was ambitious: transform the historic Bethlehem Steel plant into a fully integrated resort with three thousand slot machines, more than three hundred hotel rooms, nine restaurants, two hundred thousand square feet of retail outlet shopping, and forty-six thousand square feet of flexible event space. Construction began in 2007.

The development, originally called Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, has since been rebranded as Wind Creek Bethlehem. By 2009, the casino was projected to bring in approximately one million dollars in revenue per day.

The juxtaposition is startling. Where immigrant workers once labored over molten steel, retirees now feed coins into slot machines. The towering blast furnaces remain, preserved as industrial heritage, looming over visitors who wander through the attached shopping outlets. It is unclear whether this represents a triumphant reinvention or a melancholy commentary on American economic transformation—perhaps both.

Christmas City

Throughout all these changes, Bethlehem has maintained its connection to the holiday that gave it its name. In 1747, just six years after its founding, Bethlehem became the first city in America to feature a decorated Christmas tree—a tradition the German Moravians brought with them from Europe, decades before the practice became common in English-speaking America.

On December 7, 1937, in the depths of the Great Depression, Bethlehem officially adopted the nickname "Christmas City USA" in a grand civic ceremony. The timing was deliberate: with the economy in ruins and spirits low, the city fathers sought to give their community something to celebrate. The nickname stuck.

Today, Bethlehem transforms during the holiday season. The historic district glows with lights, tourists flock to the Christmas markets, and the city leans hard into its identity as America's Christmas capital. It is a clever bit of municipal branding, but also a genuine expression of the community's origins. After all, the Moravians who named this place were celebrating Christmas Eve at the time.

Bethlehem is one of several Lehigh Valley communities with biblical names—Egypt, Emmaus, Jordan Creek, and Nazareth are all nearby. The region's early settlers, many of them devout Christians, apparently saw the Pennsylvania landscape as a new Holy Land.

The City Today

Modern Bethlehem is a city of roughly seventy-six thousand people, making it the second-largest city in the Lehigh Valley (after Allentown) and the seventh-largest in Pennsylvania. The population has been gradually diversifying: as of the 2020 census, about thirty percent of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, compared to eighteen percent in 2000.

The city sprawls across two counties—most of it in Northampton County, with a western portion in Lehigh County. It sits along the Lehigh River, a hundred-and-nine-mile tributary of the Delaware, roughly fifty miles north of Philadelphia and eighty miles west of New York City. The climate is humid continental: hot summers, cold winters, and precipitation spread fairly evenly throughout the year.

Bethlehem divides into five main neighborhoods. Center City contains much of the historic Moravian settlement. The South Side, located across the Lehigh River, was the industrial heart of the community—home to the steel mills and the working-class neighborhoods that served them. The West Side lies in Lehigh County, the East Side borders neighboring townships, and the North Side extends up toward the township line. Each neighborhood retains its own character, shaped by the different eras in which it developed.

The major economic anchors today include healthcare (St. Luke's Hospital in neighboring Fountain Hill) and tourism. The steel industry is gone, but Bethlehem has reinvented itself around its history—the Moravian heritage, the industrial legacy, and the Christmas tradition all draw visitors.

Crime rates are moderate by regional standards—lower than Allentown, though higher than Easton, the Lehigh Valley's third-largest city. Median household income has risen but remains modest. The city is neither thriving nor dying, but rather persisting, adapting, finding new reasons to exist now that the old ones have burned away.

The Weight of History

What makes Bethlehem remarkable is the sheer density of American history packed into this modest Pennsylvania city. A religious commune that built the country's first public waterworks. A Revolutionary War sanctuary for the Continental Congress. An industrial titan that forged the steel for America's greatest buildings and ships. A reinvention as a gambling destination in the post-industrial age.

The city has four distinct sections, each recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. The Moravian buildings from the 1700s still stand. The blast furnaces from the steel era still tower over the casino. Layer upon layer of history, each era preserved even as the next era arrives to redefine the city's purpose.

And through it all, the name: Bethlehem. Chosen by a German count on Christmas Eve in 1741, when this was nothing but a clearing at the junction of two creeks. A name that has outlasted the religious commune, the industrial empire, and perhaps even the country's manufacturing economy. A name that still draws visitors every December, looking for some connection to the spirit of Christmas in a city that has been remaking itself for nearly three centuries.

The Moravians who founded Bethlehem believed they were building a new Jerusalem in the Pennsylvania wilderness. They could not have imagined what their little settlement would become—and what it would survive.