Jim Thorpe
Old Town · Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
A Victorian town wedged into the Lehigh Gorge, built on anthracite money in the nineteenth century and left almost entirely intact when the coal trade collapsed. It was called Mauch Chunk until 1954, when the widow of the athlete Jim Thorpe — who had never been there — accepted a deal from two struggling boroughs to bury him in exchange for their taking his name. The result is a town of steep streets, iron balconies and mansion houses in a river gorge, with a tourist railway, a whitewater river and a rail trail running through it, and a genuinely strange story attached.
Broadway, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, 18229, United States
The town is public and open at all times. Shops and restaurants keep daytime and evening hours, with a number closing midweek out of season. The Asa Packer Mansion and the Old Jail are seasonal, generally spring through autumn, with reduced days at each end. The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway runs a seasonal schedule and sells out on October weekends. Whitewater rafting runs on scheduled dam-release dates.