Jim Thorpe Borough

I like it here! Very nice little historic town. Pepperjacks has the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. The Harry and Asa Packer mansions are beautiful! Go to jail when you are here — the old jail runs tours! Driesbach House has good vintage. You can rent bicycles and kayaks! The train ride is nice.

I love/​hate Mauch Chunk, but I am not sure how I feel about Jim Thorpe. If that sounds questionable, I commiserate. The history of the small borough in Carbon County is just that confusing.
In the 1880’s this town located at the first navigable piece of the Lehigh River where coal could be mined in the surrounding mountains and hauled by gravity railroad and thereafter steam engine to the major markets to the east and south, was a new boom town. It may be in the East, but for all its colorful characters and lawlessness, it could easily have been Tombstone, Arizona. In fact, it looks very much like Bisbee, the Cooper Queen City of the West. Tombstone had the good fortune to have Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday. Mauch Chunk did not.
‘Mauch Chunk’ is Lenape language for, «Bear Mountain.» At the turn of the 20^th Century this hamlet was perhaps the wealthiest in Pennsylvania, and the remnants of that golden age can be seen in the splendid architectural displays. The owners of the surrounding mines and railroad (apparently, the same person at one time), were full of their Nuevo Riche selves, and didn’t care who knew it. Anyone who got in their way was aggressively removed by all available means. The mostly Irish miners who worked 18 hours days to provide the labor for that wealth lived in deplorable conditions with their families. There were no unions until the first attempt at organizing them was met with corporate resistance worthy of the terms, «union busters and scabs.»
Came a time when the miners attempted to fight back. A strike was called after the mine owners unilaterally reduced pay by 20%. Why? This is in dispute, but historians suggest that the management wanted to destroy all organized labor and picked this fight thinking they were holding all the cards. 6 months later, the strike collapsed and the men and children went back to work with the lower wage. There were instances of violence toward the owners and their work bosses, some of which resulted in death. A PInkerton detective went undercover with the workers and claimed to have collected enough evidence against the «Molly McGuires,» to arrest and prosecute them.
In an amazing act of denial of state sovereignty, the president of the largest coal mines arranged to have himself elected as District Attorney for Carbon County. He used his privately hired police force to protect the mines, collect evidence, and arrest the alleged perpetrators. The Commonwealth only provided the courtroom and the gallows for the hangings that followed.
Dark days, indeed. Boot Hill in Tombstone had nothing on this sad episode.
A cloud still hangs over the former Mauch Chunk.
Even the buying and relocation of Jim Thorpe’s bones did not remove the stain.
Injustice, violence, and duplicity hang in the air amidst the hum drum daily life of this star-​crossed yet strangely beautiful ville.