Bus tour of Palmerton

In conjunction with the Palmerton Community Festival, the local Historical Society sponsored four bus tours of historic Palmerton.  I was the guide for two of them.  Palmerton received state recognition a few years ago because it was a “company town” with clearly differentiated classes  The Zinc Company built small “bungalows” for the workers who came from Eastern Europe and Mexico at the beginning of the last century.  Middle management and research workers lived slightly above in elevation, usually in duplexes.  The owners and executives lived higher up behind a stone wall in an area known as “Residence Park.”

Riders in both tours had lived or continue to live in some of the bungalows.  From the beginning the kids of both the bosses and the workers went to the same high school, named for the president of the Zinc Company.  The company helped to fund the construction.  (I graduated in 1960.)  The company helped to build the community hospital. (I was born there and had my appendix out there.)

The Company was far more benign than area coal companies.  In the early days it had a Sociological Department to help the immigrants.  It laid out the streets.  The company president designed the park in the middle of town and the company helped to pay for a huge swimming pool after World War II.  The pool is still in use.  The Company even had a program to aid workers in buying their homes.

At one point the Zinc Company employed about 3000 workers, including my grandfather, six uncles, three aunts, and me for one summer.  The company also left a mess–there was so much pollution that portions of the Blue Mountain were denuded and soil had to be removed from people’s yards.  Guys in hazmat suits came into people’s homes and took away their rugs.  But that’s a story for another time.