Catasauqua Creek

Catasauqua Creek 16 Variant Names
USGS source and mouth of Catasauqua Creek watercourse in Catasaugua, PA
Native name	'gattawissi' means: 'growing fat' (Algonquian)
Basin features
Main source	Northampton, PA ~2,052 feet (625 m) south of Pheasant Drive, county road 248, (in the dell between Hilltop Rd and Sickle Rd., ~3,530 feet (1,080 m) north of their junction. 610 feet (186 m) 40°44′16″N 75°26′01″W / 40.7377778°N 75.4336111°W / 40.7377778; -75.4336111
River mouth	In Catasauqua opposite West Catasauqua & Allentown just south of the Race/W.Race Street Bridge on the Lehigh River below the Lehigh Gap and north of Bethlehem, PA. 272 ft (83 m) 40°38′49″N 75°28′08″W / 40.647011°N 75.468957°W / 40.647011; -75.468957Coordinates: 40°38′49″N 75°28′08″W / 40.647011°N 75.468957°W / 40.647011; -75.468957
Physical characteristics
Length	14.9 mi (24.0 km)

Catasauqua Creek is a ENE–SSW oriented creek draining 6.6 miles (10.6 km) (straight line distance) from springs of the Blue Mountain barrier ridge several miles below the Lehigh Gap in the ridge-and-valley Appalachians located upriver & opposite from Allentown in Lehigh and Northampton counties in Pennsylvania.

The mouth of the creek outlets directly opposite West Catasauqua, Pennsylvania just below the Race Street bridge across the Lehigh, the latest of the several successor structures built to replace the original wooden bridge built in 1839-1840 to carry heavy wagons of iron ore to the new furnaces being built within the new village aborning as the Lehigh Crane Iron Company created the infrastructure to father the iron and steel industry of the Lehigh Valley. The head of the Creek begins in the Dannersville neighborhood of Bath at 40°44′16″N latitude 75°25′58″W longitude (or 40.737849,-75.432824) forming a steep sided ravine almost immediately as it gathers waters over its first mile. By the time it passes Sauerkraut Hill its gathered two major tributary creeks and is leaving steeper terrain for a gentler run over the last four miles or so remaining to its mouth.

Catasauqua Creek was the water course along which six of the first eight successful anthracite fueled iron smelting hot blast furnaces in North America were erected for it was chosen in 1839 as a mill stream by Erskine Hazard & Josiah White, co-founders of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, along which to establish their new subsidiary: the Lehigh Crane Iron Company with imported Welsh expert David Thomas as superintendent to construct and operate blast furnaces. The area first appears in the historical record as a manorial deed in Penns times, but a surnames analysis by [TBDL-author of History of Northampton County] in his 1877 history of Northampton County shows the area was first settled by Irish emigrants (late 1600s–early 1700s) who became bought out by descendants of German extraction.