Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Glendon Glendon, PA

Glendon is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, within the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, and with 373 residents at the 2020 census it is the second-smallest municipality in the county by population, behind only Chapman.

Glendon exists because of iron: the Glendon Iron Works opened in 1844 on land between the Lehigh River and the Lehigh Canal, on ground that is now part of Easton's Hugh Moore Park.

The Glendon Iron Works was founded by Boston entrepreneur Charles Jackson Jr. and was the second anthracite-iron production facility established in the Lehigh Valley, producing pig iron from 1844 until 1894.

By 1856 the Glendon Iron Works was recognized as one of the best iron works in Pennsylvania for quality, and by 1868 the company had five furnaces in operation and had built 30 to 40 buildings for its growing workforce.

The company town grew so fast that it incorporated as a borough on December 18, 1867, splitting off from Williams Township, and its population jumped from 141 that year to 707 by 1870 and about 1,000 by 1880.

Glendon was unusual among Gilded Age company towns for never having a strike and never having a union presence, while paying its iron workers wages said to be comparable to Wall Street financial analysts of the era.

Glendon also developed a rowdy reputation in its boom years, when workers spent much of their pay on cheap whiskey and the tiny borough maintained its own police force and public school system.

The permanent closure of the Glendon Iron Company in 1894 ended the boom, and the borough's population slid from its peak of about 1,000 down to 373 by 2020.

At the 2000 census, Glendon had 367 residents living in 139 households within the borough's 0.62 square miles.

Interstate 78 passes through the entire length of Glendon, but the borough has no exit of its own; the nearest interchange is in neighboring Williams Township.