Portland Cement
Upper Nazareth Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
This industry was born in the Lehigh Valley. David O. Saylor first made portland cement at Coplay in 1871. Here also was the first use of the rotary kiln process commercially Nov. 8, 1889. This region has continued to lead in the industry.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The Lehigh Valley's limestone and cement rock gave rise to America's portland cement industry, and this region led the way. David O. Saylor first produced portland cement at nearby Coplay in 1871, and in 1889 the area saw the first commercial use of the rotary kiln, a breakthrough that made mass production possible. For decades the valley's kilns supplied the concrete that built modern American cities.
Why it matters
The cement made here literally paved the foundations of modern America—its roads, dams, and skyscrapers—marking the Lehigh Valley as a birthplace of an industry that reshaped the built landscape.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The decades after the Civil War were a time when America began to build upward and outward at a scale never seen before. Railroads stitched the country together, cities crowded skyward, and a hunger for stronger, more permanent building materials took hold. This is the world into which the marker's story belongs — the Reconstruction and Gilded Age, when industry, not agriculture, increasingly defined a region's fortunes.
Eastern Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley was uniquely suited to answer that hunger. Beneath its rolling farmland lay rich seams of limestone and a peculiar local stone that proved ideal for making cement. Where other places had to import their raw materials, the valley simply quarried them from the ground underfoot.
That geological luck, combined with the era's booming demand for construction, turned a quiet stretch of Northampton County into the cradle of an entirely new American industry.
People & events
The name to remember here is David O. Saylor, the man credited with first producing portland cement in this country. In 1871, working at nearby Coplay, he manufactured the material that would eventually bind together much of modern America.
"Portland" cement takes its name not from any American town but from a resemblance its inventors saw to the fine building stone of Portland, England. What Saylor and his contemporaries achieved was to make that material here, from local rock, at a scale that could matter.
The second great leap came in 1889, when this region saw the first commercial use of the rotary kiln — a long, rotating furnace that could bake the raw ingredients continuously rather than in slow, small batches. It was the kind of unglamorous breakthrough that quietly changes everything: it let cement be made in enormous quantities, and it kept the Lehigh Valley at the front of the industry for generations.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to walk past cement without a thought, and that is precisely the point — it became so ordinary because places like this made it abundant. The concrete poured for sidewalks, bridges, dams, factory floors, and the foundations of tall buildings all traces back to the industry that took root in the Lehigh Valley.
An innovation like the rotary kiln matters far beyond a single county. Mass-produced cement helped make possible the reinforced concrete construction that reshaped American skylines and infrastructure in the decades that followed. A material that had once been costly and scarce became cheap enough to build a modern nation with.
This marker stakes a modest but real claim: that a fundamental building block of the built environment around you got its American start right here.
If you visit
You are in the gently rolling country of Northampton County, where farmland and old industrial towns sit side by side. This is not a dramatic monument — it is a roadside marker that asks you to slow down and reconsider something you have overlooked your whole life.
As you travel the Lehigh Valley, keep an eye out for the tall stacks, old quarries, and cement-town names that dot the landscape. Coplay, where the story began, is nearby, and the region's industrial past is written plainly across it if you know to look.
Make it a stop on a road trip through eastern Pennsylvania's industrial heritage. Stand at the marker, look at the ground and the hills around you, and remember that the very stone underfoot helped pour the foundations of the country's cities.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David O. Saylor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Christian Frederick Martin (1796-1867)
Nazareth, PA · est. 2000
German-born Christian Frederick Martin founded his guitar-making firm in 1833 and, in 1838, moved it from New York City to the Moravian community around Nazareth, building a small shop here in 1859. Martin's workshop pioneered designs — the X-braced flat-top and later the powerful Dreadnought — that would define the sound of the American acoustic guitar. Today C. F. Martin & Co. ranks among the oldest surviving musical instrument makers in the world.
Henry's Gun Factory
Plainfield Township, PA · est. 1974
About 1800, William Henry II built a firearms works in this Northampton County valley, part of a noted gunmaking family whose craftsmanship armed Americans across generations. Rifles and muskets made here supplied troops in the War of 1812, and the Henry name endured on shotguns produced as late as 1904. The factory was one of the small, skilled arms shops that gave the young nation its firepower.
The Lehigh Canal
Glendon, PA · est. 1995
Dug between 1827 and 1829, the Lehigh Canal ran 47 miles from Mauch Chunk to Easton, where it met the Delaware Canal to Philadelphia and the Morris Canal to New York. It was a vital artery for hauling anthracite coal out of Pennsylvania's hard-coal region, fueling the rise of the anthracite iron industry that powered the young nation's growth. The canal ran in full operation until 1932, and this restored section reopened in 1976.
George Taylor
Easton, PA · est. 1953
This handsome stone house was built in 1757 by William Parsons, the Surveyor-General who laid out Easton, and first served as his own home. It later belonged to George Taylor, an ironmaster and member of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Taylor's forges helped supply the Revolution with the iron of war, and his signature bound him to the boldest gamble of the founding generation.