Laurys Station, PA

At the 2020 census, Laurys Station was a Lehigh County census-designated place of 1,170 people along Pennsylvania Route 145 and the Lehigh River, about nine miles north of Allentown. The place began as Slate Dam after the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company built a large dam in 1830. David Laury opened a hotel in 1832, and the hotel turned the river bend into a summer resort before the community took his name.

The river wraps Laurys Station on three sides, so the town's old transportation story is inseparable from its water. Canal-era industry and later rail access moved slate, coal, and people through the Lehigh Valley; the station itself took the name of the hotelkeeper and postmaster. Today the bend still gives the place its shape, while Parkland schools connect it to a much larger suburban and industrial valley. Laurys Station is a small river community with a dam at the beginning of its story and a school district at the other end.