Lehigh-Lafayette Football Game
Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
First played in 1884 at Lafayette College, it is recognized by the NCAA as college football's most played rivalry. The teams have met more than 150 times. The game has been covered in national publications such as Sports Illustrated and the New York Times and featured on ESPN.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The rivalry between Lehigh and Lafayette began in 1884 at Lafayette College and became a defining fixture of the Lehigh Valley. Meeting more than 150 times, the two schools hold the NCAA's recognition for the most-played rivalry in college football. The annual clash has been chronicled in national outlets including Sports Illustrated and the New York Times and broadcast on ESPN.
Why it matters
Marked here on the Bethlehem side, the game represents college football's longest-running rivalry and the enduring role of collegiate athletics in American community life.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · First Lafayette-Lehigh game, 1884
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Catherine Drinker Bowen
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1997
Catherine Drinker Bowen grew up in this Bethlehem home while her father served as a university president in the early twentieth century, absorbing a world of ideas that shaped her career. She became one of America's most admired biographers and historians, bringing figures like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Sir Edward Coke vividly to life, and celebrating the drama of the Constitutional Convention in "Miracle at Philadelphia." Her narrative gift made scholarly history accessible to a wide reading public.
Bell House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953
Raised in 1745 by Bethlehem's Moravians, this sturdy Germanic building first sheltered the community as a Family House before opening in 1749 as a school for girls — an unusually early commitment to educating young women in colonial America. Its turret carried the town's first clock in 1746 and a bell cast right in Bethlehem that still rings, while a weathervane fashioned as the church seal crowns the roof. The details speak to a close-knit religious settlement that built for permanence and for learning.
Gemeinhaus
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953
Built in 1741, the Gemeinhaus was the beating heart of the new Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, its second floor serving as the community's first place of worship. In 1742 Count von Zinzendorf, the Moravians' patron and leader, kept his quarters here while directing the church's ambitious missionary work in America. Through the colonial and Revolutionary years its rooms hosted conference after notable conference, making this log building a center of religious and civic life on the Pennsylvania frontier.
Gemein Haus - PLAQUE
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1931
Raised in 1741 as Bethlehem's first house of worship, the Gemein Haus stood at the heart of the Moravians' remarkable communal experiment in colonial Pennsylvania. Its rooms sheltered a roll call of Moravian leaders — including the reforming Count Zinzendorf — and hosted the community's celebrated 1749 "Great Wedding." Most strikingly, it housed a school devoted to studying and teaching Indigenous languages, part of the Moravians' unusual missionary engagement with Native peoples of the region.