Jim Thorpe

History

Jim Thorpe was founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk (), a name derived from the term Mawsch Unk, meaning Bear Place in Unami, the language of the native Lenape, possibly a reference to Bear Mountain, an extension of Mauch Chunk Ridge that resembled a sleeping bear, or perhaps the original profile of the ridge, which has since been changed heavily by 220 years of mining. The company town was founded by Josiah White and his two partners, founders of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N). The town would be the lower terminus of a gravity railroad, the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, which would bring coal to the head of the LC&N Lehigh Canal for transshipment to the confluence of the Delaware River, downstream at Easton. It would thereby ship LC&N's coal to Philadelphia, Trenton, New York City, and other large cities in New Jersey and Delaware, and by ocean to the whole East Coast. Canal shipping was eventually replaced by railroad shipping. The town grew slowly in its first decade, then rapidly around 1818 grew larger as it became an anthracite coal-shipping center. (The other large city with growing coal mining in the region was Scranton, with a population of over 140,000.) Mauch Chunk is on a Lehigh River west side (right bank) flat where Mahoning Creek enters and is a tributary of the Lehigh River. The river's left bank community of East Mauch Chunk, which has more of the houses of modern Jim Thorpe, was settled later to support the short-lived Beaver Creek Railroad, the mines which spawned it, and the logging industry. It came into greater growth when the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1885 pushed up the valley on the river's east bank to oppose LC&N's effective transportation monopoly over the region, which extended across to northwest Wilkes-Barre at Pittston on…

Geography

Jim Thorpe is located near the center of Carbon County at . In the deeps of the geologic timescale the two shorelines of the Lehigh River occupied by the 19th-century towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk were situated on the bottom of an ancient river-fed tarn, a mountain lake which filled the valley on the west bank and covered the relative flatlands on the east bank. The muddy bottom of that high tarn (the range then rivaling the Himalayas in size), where the waters pooled at a lower elevation amongst the twisted folds of four near-parallel ridgelines, created a level region whose settlements became the relatively flat lands on either bank of the Lehigh. The ridgelines, which run east-northeast to west-southwest, are (from north to south) Broad, Nesquehoning, Pisgah, and Mauch Chunk ridges (or Mountains)—each of which runs over west to the gaps cut by the Schuylkill River. According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough of Jim Thorpe has a total area of , of which is land and , or 2.15%, is water. Jim Thorpe is north and upstream of Lehighton, below the Lehigh Gap which sunders Bear Mountain on the east bank from the extended ridge of Mauch Chunk Mountain. The town is east of Nesquehoning, which is up a steep grade and around the bend along U.S. 209 South, and also butting up against the slopes of Mount Pisgah. This was a key element in the LC&N's planning, for the grade from the mountain ridge down to the river enabled them to fill barges quickly, using chutes and an elevated entry from a road down the ridge face. Jim Thorpe's developed elevations range between the river slack water at above sea level— to the town's upper streets, all below the western peak of Mount Pisgah, which tops out at above sea level. The elevation of the Borough of…

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  7,243
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  6,658
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,784
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  5,741
• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  5,457
• Mourning Dove

  Zenaida macroura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,949
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  4,629
• Tufted Titmouse

  Baeolophus bicolor (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  4,237

Largest nearby schools

• Lehighton Area Elementary Center
  Elementary · Lehighton · 998 students · 13.7:1 ratio
• Panther Valley JSHS
  High · Lansford · 771 students · 18.4:1 ratio
• Lehighton Area HS
  High · Lehighton · 660 students · 10.3:1 ratio
• L B Morris El Sch
  Elementary · Jim Thorpe · 624 students · 12.5:1 ratio
• Panther Valley El Sch
  Elementary · Nesquehoning · 622 students · 15.6:1 ratio
• Jim Thorpe Area HS
  High · Jim Thorpe · 565 students · 14.1:1 ratio
• Lehighton Area MS
  Middle · Lehighton · 513 students · 10.3:1 ratio
• Palmerton Area HS
  High · Palmerton · 482 students · 12.1:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.9 — 2024-05-24
  6 km E of Califon, New Jersey
• M 2.6 — 2024-05-01
  1 km NW of Gladstone, New Jersey
• M 2.9 — 2024-04-27
  7 km WSW of Gladstone, New Jersey
• M 2.6 — 2024-04-10
  5 km WSW of Gladstone, New Jersey
• M 3.7 — 2024-04-05
  7 km WSW of Gladstone, New Jersey
• M 2.6 — 2024-04-05
  6 km ESE of Califon, New Jersey