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Though shipments boomed again after World War II, nearly reaching the 1927 peak in the mid-1950s, investment did not recover. Only seven of the sixteen plants in the Lehigh Valley had installed new kilns by 1958. Most of the remaining plants shut by 1970 and by 1983 only five fully integrated plants remained in the Lehigh Valley. The New Jersey plants had shut by 1942. The Lehigh Portland Cement Co. plant at Ormrod shut in 1958, the Coplay Cement Co. at Coplay plant in 1979 and the Universal Atlas plant at Northampton in 1981. This occurred as part of a general shakeout in the American industry with about the number of plants shrinking by one third from a peak of 186 in 1967 to 122 in 1989 after being hit by higher fuel prices, tighter environmental regulation and increased competition from imports. Like the rest of the American cement industry, the Lehigh Valley firms became foreign owned. In 2008, just four integrated cement plants remain in the Lehigh Valley– at Cementon (Lafarge), at Nazareth (Essroc), at Bath (Keystone) and at Stockertown (Buzzi Unicem). Lehigh Portland Cement retained its head offices at Fogelsville until 2008.
References
Concrete
Peter Collins (2004) Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture, McGill-Queens University Press. Montreal. Quebec, Canada.
Natural Cement
Thomas F. Hahn and Emory L. Kemp (1994) Cement Mills Along the Potomac River, Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology, Morgantown WV.
Portland Cement
Earl J. Hadley (1945) The Magic Powder, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York NY.
Robert W. Lesley, John B. Lober and George S. Bartlett (1924) History of the American Portland Cement Industry in the United States, International Trade Press, Chicago IL.
United States Geological Survey (various) Minerals Yearbook of the United States, GPO, Washington DC.
