The Penn Relays, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

As I mentioned back when I first started this blog, I'm approaching it somewhat like the quest journal of a video game. Well, sometimes in my favorite games, there are quests that I can't undertake alone; sometimes things are just simply inaccessible to me. That's when I have to rely on one of my companions for assistance. Whether they build a bridge, lend me a horse, or just act as my bodyguard on the mission, it's always good to have friends.

Today's blog post is crafted with the help of one of my real life "NPCs." My former coworker Sheila was kind enough to take some pictures of a couple of markers and their subjects down in Philadelphia and send them to me.

The Old Waterworks, Bethlehem, Northampton County

The last weekend in September, some of my friends and I like to visit Bethlehem and attend the Celtic Classic, the largest annual Celtic festival in North America. A couple of my friends are Scottish, Andrea and my husband are Irish, and I myself am Welsh, so we have a pretty decent representation of the nations as we basically eat our way through the festivities. 

This year was nothing out of the ordinary. We listened to bagpipes, browsed the local vendors, and crossed the Monocacy Creek to the Colonial Industrial Quarter. This is where representatives of different Celtic and historical organizations in the United States set up their tents and share their stories. This is also where one of my quest markers is situated.

The Colonial Industrial Quarter is just off of Bethlehem's Main Street, with a walkway right next to the Hotel Bethlehem leading down into the earliest industrial park in the entire country. It was a significant portion of Bethlehem's Moravian community, which is an ongoing topic in several posts in this blog. The positioning of the quarter is deliberate, as the waters of the Monocacy Creek were absolutely vital to the operations. Some of the buildings are ruins - the pottery, the butchery, and the dye house have little to show for themselves nowadays. However, visitors can still enjoy two of the old mills, the tannery, the springhouse, the rebuilt smithy, and today's subject - the Old Waterworks.