Introduction

Jim Thorpe is a borough of roughly 4,500 people tucked into a steep gorge in Pennsylvania's Carbon County, about 30 miles northwest of Allentown. Based on current visitor information from the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau, the town is best known for two things that have nothing to do with each other: a genuinely striking Victorian-era downtown squeezed between ridgelines, and a name it acquired in 1954 under circumstances most visitors don't learn about until they arrive.

From Mauch Chunk to Jim Thorpe

The town was founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk, a name derived from a Lenape term generally translated as "Bear Mountain" or "Bear Place." Built by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, it became a major 19th-century coal-shipping hub, and its downtown — still largely intact — dates from that boom period. By the mid-20th century, with the coal and rail economy collapsing, the neighboring boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk were struggling.

In 1953, Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox Nation) died in California. According to multiple historical accounts, his widow, Patricia, had been unable to secure a memorial for him in his home state of Oklahoma. She proposed a deal to the two Pennsylvania boroughs: if they merged, renamed themselves after her late husband, and built him a memorial and mausoleum, she would deliver his remains and the publicity that came with them. Voters approved the merger and renaming by wide margins in both boroughs, and on January 1, 1954, Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk became Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania — a town Thorpe himself never lived in or is known to have visited during his life.

That arrangement has remained contested. Thorpe's surviving sons and the Sac and Fox Nation sued under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to have his remains returned to Oklahoma; a federal district court initially sided with the family in 2013, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2014, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a further appeal in October 2015. As of our research in August 2026, that remains the final legal outcome — Thorpe's remains stay in the mausoleum on the town's north side — though the family and tribe have continued to press the issue outside the courts, and it would be inaccurate to describe the matter as settled in every sense.

The "Switzerland of America"

Long before the Thorpe deal, Mauch Chunk had already picked up the nickname "the Switzerland of America" (also rendered "America's Little Switzerland"), a reference to its narrow gorge setting and Victorian architecture stacked up steep hillsides. It's a marketing-era nickname rather than a geological claim — the resemblance to the Alps is a matter of local pride more than scale — but it does capture something real about the town's setting that flat-town Pennsylvania doesn't have.

Getting There

Jim Thorpe has no airport or train service of its own for arriving visitors. The closest commercial airport is Lehigh Valley International (ABE) in Allentown, roughly 30 miles away. Philadelphia International (PHL) is about 85 miles south, and New York City is roughly 105–115 miles northeast depending on route, generally a two-to-two-and-a-half-hour drive. Most visitors arrive by car via I-476 (the Northeast Extension of the PA Turnpike) or Route 209; there is no regular intercity bus or rail option directly into town.