The Shelter House is located on the north face of South Mountain where three streams converge. The house is nestled in a clearing of woods made up of old hard-wood growth. Built in around 1734 by early Pennsylvania Colonial German settlers, the Shelter House is considered the oldest continually inhabited dwelling in the Lehigh Valley.
In the nearby village, later to become Emmaus, Moravians from Bethlehem., PA were forming frontier outposts in the area. The shelter house whose German name is Zufluchtshaus (a house of refuge or shelter), sits in a sylvan wooded spot where visitors can envision earlier times when one could hear with clarity the breeze, birds, and streams. The house was inhabited when conflicts in the area could have been with the British or the Native Americans. All of this history and more is included in our group tours of The Shelter House.