Historic Towns in the Lehigh Valley Allentown Bethlehem Easton Nazareth Hazleton Jim Thorpe Wilkes-Barre. Allentown was a rural village founded in 1762 by William Allen, Chief Justice of Colonial Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, known as Northampton town. A thriving town with roots in the iron industry, by 1829 Allentown expanded from a small Pennsylvania Dutch village of farmers and tradesmen to a center of commerce. With the opening of the Lehigh Canal, many canal workers made their homes here Barre