The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center is located in a building that housed the first church in the then to be county of Carbon. The cornerstone for a single-story building for St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church was laid 1843 and the building was dedicated in 1845. In 1873, a second story was added.

With the “Prelude to Prosperity” display to his rear, John Drury - founder and president of the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center, holds model of the earliest coal barges that carried coal from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia through a navigation system of hydraulically actuated Bear Trap Locks.

 Joe   Lesisko, a senior aid and tour guide at the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center places a rail car on the track of a 28-feet long operable scale model of the Switchback Gravity Railroad—the first significant railroad in America.

Reproduction of the first known photograph of Mauch Chunk taken 1858 is displayed on the wall of the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center. Note the Asa Packer Mansion has yet to be built.

The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center tells the story of Mauch Chunk/Jim Thorpe. The first floor museum opened in 1993 and the second floor cultural center opened ten years later.

A Victorian Parlor is reassembled at the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center. The room features a pump organ and a music cabinet.

John Drury holds strap iron covering used on early Switchback tracks.

Got Questions about .Jim Thorpe/Mauch Chunk? The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center has Answers.

Enigmatic Jim Thorpe—the Brigadoon-like valley ensconced within three mountains, divided by a river and with a creek diverted beneath, is a curious place. It is a place of natural beauty once decimated by industrialization and, much like the story of Sleeping Beauty, returned to its primordial state when the canals and railroads were abandoned, allowing the forest to reform about them.

Peddlers and paddlers roaming the forests and the streams are forever discovering remnants of that ancient civilization of Mauch Chunk whose primitive technology created thirty-foot high dam locks—higher than any in the world today.

 Got Questions about Jim Thorpe/Mauch Chunk? The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center has Answers.

 Your First Stop in Jim Thorpe

When you arrive in Jim Thorpe for the first time, make the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center your first stop. Start with the video,  “The Story of Mauch Chunk.” It serves as both an orientation to both the town and the museum.

 Walking through the Museum is a walk through the geology, history and culture of the area. The first display begins with the formation of coal, millions of years ago, and tells the history of the town’s coal, navigation and railroad industries and its principal industrialists Josiah White and Asa Packer.

 When the coal and railroad industries peaked in the later 1800s, the wealthy residents built many of its downtown Victorian buildings. The declining industrial base hit bottom during the Depression and the remaining assets were largely abandoned.

 In the 1970s, led by Agnes McCartney, Dennis De Mara, Elissa Marsden, Joe Boyle, and Tom and Betty Lou McBride, the area entered into a period of revitalization and preservation. The abandoned areas had reforested attracting visitors for mountain biking, rafting, hiking, fishing and hunting. 

 An additional display tells the story of Jim Thorpe the athlete, the town’s most famous non-resident.

 Making of the Museum

John Drury came to Jim Thorpe in 1988to acquire the New American Hotel. He purchased it and with the help of Jack Sturm, Mike Gontar and son, David, converted it into the Inn at Jim Thorpe.

 “Over the two year-period we were developing the hotel. I learned about the spectacular history here,” Drury said. He acquired the St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal building in 1988, hoping to develop it into a museum. At the time, the church building was slated for demolition.

 St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1843, was the first church in what would become Carbon County. In 1873, a second story was added and the original roof, not one designed for a much taller building, was reinstalled.

 After St. Paul’s closed and was deconsecrated in 1977, the badly sagging roof signaled that the building needed to be torn down. Many of the architectural features were removed from the building in anticipation of its demise.

 In 1988, Drury purchased the building for $28,000 and hired an engineer and a contractor to rebuild the roof and areas of the building that were cut open to remove the stained glass windows and organ.

 The former Sunday School area on the first floor, was rebuilt to form exhibition and office space. With the support and assistance of Laura Thomas and the creation of the core exhibit by Joan Gilbert, the first floor opened as a museum in 1993.

 Museum & Cultural Center

Drury had a dream to create a space that could be used for community functions from weddings to civic events to spiritual gatherings. Over the next ten years, he worked to develop the second floor of the building into a Cultural Center and in 2002, the Cultural Center had its grand opening.

 The second floor Cultural Center features a grand ballroom with a high ceiling, a stage, and a choir loft The room is equipped with stage lighting, a large rear projection system, a sound system and small kitchen. The walls, ceiling, flooring and woodwork try to recapture the feel of the 1880s glory days of Mauch Chunk.

 Museum Highlights

No visit to the Museum is complete without  viewing a 28-foot long operable model of the Switchback Gravity Railroad built by Walter Neihoff and an operable Bear Trap Lock built in 1988 by Harold Yahl and Robyn Williams with the advice of late canal historian, Richard Arner.

 Outside the museum is a rusted turbine wheel. Between 1896 and the 1920s, it was mounted at the Packer Dam, about a quarter mile upstream of Jim Thorpe, and used waterpower to make the electricity used to run the Mauch Chunk trolley. A flood in 1945 destroyed the dam. Drury located the turbine and had it removed from the Lehigh River.

 The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center is a small museum with a big story to tell. It’s where over 5,000 visitors each year learn about the town’s history and share their experiences with Senior Aid administrator Lynn Walter.

 For further information, call (570) 325-9190 or visit: www.mauchchunkmuseum.com. Memberships help support the 503-c non-profit corporation.