Alpha: The Town Named for Cement
Near Allentown, New Jersey
The Warren County borough of Alpha tells its own story in its name. The land here sits atop rich limestone deposits, and in the late eighteen hundreds that limestone attracted the cement industry. The settlement was first known as Vulcanite, after the Vulcanite Portland Cement Company.
The final name came from the Alpha Portland Cement Company, which took over and gave the place the name that stuck. The borough formally incorporated in nineteen eleven, around the cement works. Alpha is one of those rare American towns whose name is not a place borrowed from Europe or a founder's surname, but a brand stamped on the landscape by industry.
