Fort Deshler: A Swiss Immigrant's Stone Refuge

Near the north bank of Coplay Creek, just beyond where you are now, stood one of the more substantial private fortifications in colonial Pennsylvania. Adam Deshler, a native of Switzerland, built it in seventeen sixty as both a family homestead and a refuge for nearby settlers during the recurring violence of the French and Indian War era. Stone construction gave it durability that timber palisades could not match, and the building served as a place of shelter during raids along this stretch of the Lehigh Valley frontier.

The Deshler family held the property for several generations. By eighteen ninety-nine it had passed to the Coplay Cement Company, which used this land as part of its industrial operations. The old fort structure stood until around nineteen forty, when it finally collapsed after nearly two centuries. A Swiss immigrant's practical response to a dangerous frontier, it outlasted the wars that made it necessary by almost two hundred years.