Roseto () is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population of Roseto was 1,581 at the 2020 census. Roseto is part of the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, which has a population of 861,899 and is the 68th most populated metropolitan area in the U.S. as of the 2020 census.
Roseto is known in the fields of sociology and cardiology for the Roseto effect, wherein the close-knit Italian American community exhibited half the national average rate of heart disease in the mid-20th century. This finding helped to establish that stress can contribute to heart disease.
History
Roseto, meaning "Rose garden" in Italian, is named for the village of Roseto Valfortore. Neighboring communities were settled primarily by those of German, English, and Welsh descent. The first Italian immigrants from Roseto Valfortore, Italy arrived in 1882 to work in the local slate quarries. The Wind Gap and Delaware Railroad opened a line through the town in 1883. It was operated by the Central Railroad of New Jersey until 1905, after which it was merged into the Lehigh and New England Railroad; LNE abandoned the line in 1955. Roseto was incorporated as a borough in 1912.
In 1974, folklorist Carla Bianco studied Roseto and its inhabitants in her important The Two Rosetos, published by Indiana University Press. She compared Roseto to the mountain town where its name and most of its original settlers had come from, Roseto Valfortore in the Apulia region of southern Italy. Bianco calculated that "95 percent of its present 1,600 inhabitants are still descendants of Roseto Valfortore". A local doctor also noticed positive health rates in Roseto, leading to a study that identified the Roseto effect in public health.
Geography
Roseto is located at (40.880576, -75.217345). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of , 0% of it being water.
Transportation
As of 2017, there were of public roads in Roseto, of which were maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and were maintained by the borough.
Pennsylvania Route 191 and Pennsylvania Route 512 are the numbered highways serving Roseto. PA 191 follows Roseto Avenue and First Street along a north-south alignment through the eastern part of the borough. PA 512 follows Blue Valley Drive along an east-west alignment along the southwestern edge of the borough.
Demographics
As of the 2000 census,