Geology of Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania: Historical Works

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The website "Geology of Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania: Historical Works" provides scanned images and searchable text of two volumes produced by the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.

While published by a geological survey, these volumes (hereafter, the "Miller volumes") contain a rich and diverse wealth of detail not only about geology, but a variety of other subject areas. For example, persons interested not only in geology, but also in history, place names, culture, meteorology, and economics of the region will want to see these volumes.

To convey a flavor for the wide breadth of coverage of the volumes, the main page for the site contains a drag-down menu titled "Highlights and Sample Topics", with entries for: Allentown Limestone; Climate; William Penn; Lehigh-Early History; Lehigh-Geologic History; Lehigh-Mineral Resources; Lehigh-Place Names; Northampton-Early History; and, Northampton-Place Names. Selecting these subject headers brings up pages from the Miller volumes that address these subjects.

Throughout the volumes are plates depicting such things as dams; photomicrographs of rock sections; quarries; mines; and rock outcroppings. An additional feature of the volumes are extensive bibliographies for persons wanting to do further research.

To facilitate use of the volumes, the user can either browse the table of contents, or enter terms into the search interface.

Once you have found a page of interest, you can click on the "add this item to my favorites" button to save it. Then, view the selected items in the my favorites section, where the selected pages will appear. This feature enables you to produce a Web page of your favorites that can be printed or e-mailed.

The print section provides PDFs of printable individual pages or sections of pages. These PDF files are also accessible while viewing pages using the browse and search features.

A geologic map of Northampton County can be viewed in the maps section, as well as geologic and topographic maps of Lehigh County. The maps can be viewed using Flash™ or Mr.Sid® software.

The other resources section provides links to scanned materials, websites, library databases and library guides that provide background and supplementary material for the two Miller volumes. Included here are B.L. Miller's pamphlet "Guidebook to Places of Geologic Interest in the Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania" (PA Geological Survey) and scanned images of memorials to Benjamin L. Miller, the primary author of the volumes.