Friedensville is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

which is located in Upper Saucon Township in

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Lehigh County (; Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Lechaa Kaundi'') is a County (United States), county in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the coun ...

. It is part of the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley () is a geography, geographic and urban area, metropolitan region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton counties in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a co ...

, which had a population of 861,899 and was the 68th-most populous

metropolitan area A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban area, urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which share Industry (economics), industries, commercial areas, Transport infrastructure, transport network ...

in the U.S. as of the 2020 census. The community's name is derived from the , "Church of peace". Zinc mining was once a key industry in the area.

History

Friedensville Zinc Mines, founded in 1845, were an important operation in Friedensville. Jacob Ueberroth (1786–1862), a local farmer, first discovered the

zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...

mineral, around 1830. In 1881, Franklin Osgood purchased the Lehigh Zinc Company’s mines and formed the Friedensville Zinc Company. He built a

zinc oxide Zinc oxide is an inorganic compound with the Chemical formula, formula . It is a white powder which is insoluble in water. ZnO is used as an additive in numerous materials and products including cosmetics, Zinc metabolism, food supplements, rubbe ...

plant and zinc smelter in Friedensville.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania