The Lehigh Valley Heritage Center is the history museum and artifact archive of the coal mining, steel smelting, and war loving region in the Great Appalachian Valley. The coal was used to power ships, the steel used to build ships, and men sent to operate the ships. The ships were sent around the world to kill foreign soldiers – or that’s how the old war propaganda posters put it.
The heritage center sits in the same park as Trout Hall, the house built by James Allen in 1770, son of the city’s founder William Allen. It became a seminary in 1848, part of a college two decades later, and is now home to the historical society. Steel was forged not long after the house was built. The industry began in 1797 and scaled up in the 1840s to produce iron rails, the remains of the forge closed in 1905 remain as a national historic site.
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