Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Catasauqua, PA

Catasauqua is a borough in Lehigh County, a suburb of Allentown in the Lehigh Valley, and residents know it by the nickname 'Catty.'

The name Catasauqua comes from the Lenape language and is translated as 'dry ground' or 'thirsty ground'; the community was known earlier as Biery's Port and then Craneville.

Catasauqua was settled in 1805 and incorporated as a borough in 1853, with ironmaster David Thomas chosen as its first burgess.

Welsh immigrant David Thomas, remembered as 'the father of Catasauqua,' opened the Crane Iron Works here, and in July 1840 its furnace produced the first commercially successful anthracite iron in America — an achievement that makes Catasauqua a birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.

Catasauqua had 6,518 residents at the 2020 census, up from 6,436 in 2010, within a borough of only about 1.3 square miles along the Lehigh River.

By 1900 Catasauqua was said to have the highest percentage of self-made millionaires of any town in the United States.

The George Taylor House, built in 1768 by Declaration of Independence signer George Taylor overlooking the Lehigh River, is a National Historic Landmark and is owned by the borough, which offers tours and events there.

The Lehigh Canal beside the borough hauled anthracite coal down from the coal fields and delivered it directly to the Crane Iron Works' blast furnaces, while the Catasauqua and Fogelsville Railroad brought in limonite ore.

Catasauqua's older streets around the old port are preserved as the Biery's Port Historic District, one of the neighborhoods listed in the borough's records.