Biery's Port: Catasauqua's Industrial Birthplace

The stretch of the Lehigh River you are passing through was once called Biery's Port, and it is the oldest part of what is now Catasauqua. An early structure here was a grist mill, grinding grain for the surrounding farms of colonial Pennsylvania.

Starting in the early eighteen hundreds, a merchant named Biery bought land and began developing the area commercially, raising several landmark stone buildings that still anchor the neighborhood. Catasauqua was incorporated in eighteen fifty-three, and by then it had found a second identity as an early hub of the anthracite iron industry. Iron produced here using coal from the nearby Lehigh Valley helped supply the expanding American rail network. The port itself gave way to industry, but the old stone buildings Biery left behind tell you where it all started.