Although Tom Potter is an expert on the history of the Upper Chunk area, he hasn’t been back to his boyhood neighborhood for 60 years. As Tom left the car and looked around at his boyhood neighborhood, his jaw literally dropped. “I am in Wonderland,” said Tom. “What a change in these homes! I don't know why I didn't come here before to see this.”

Tom Potter, standing at the base of the Mount Pisgah Plane in the Heights section of Jim Thorpe, points to the house where he grew up on North Street. Tom stands at a spot that was a hollow where he and his friends played sandlot baseball, flew kites and would sneak rides on the Switchback railroad.

Tom is a guide at the Mauch Chunk Museum in Jim Thorpe. He helps visitors understand the changes to the borough as it matured from wilderness to industrial center and into a major tourist attraction. Tom witnessed many of these changes.

Tom Potter, at 89 years old, was called the Unofficial Historian of Mauch Chunk by Mauch Chunk Museum Director John Drury. “He’s nearly 90 years old and still sharp as a tack,” said John.

Please note: This story was written in Oct. 2001, before Tommy Potter passed away

From the window of young Tommy Potter’s home on North Street in Upper Mauch Chunk, he could hear the ringing of the steel bands used to pull the Switchback cars to the top of Mount Pisgah.

“It was a pleasant sound, not too noisy,” remembers Tom. “Each band was attached to a Barney car that pulled the Switchback to the Engine House on top of the mountain. It was not too smoky.”

Tom Potter, now 89 years old, was called the Unofficial Historian of Mauch Chunk by Mauch Chunk Museum Director John Drury. “He’s nearly 90 years old and still sharp as a tack,” said John.

Tom is a guide at the Mauch Chunk Museum in Jim Thorpe. He helps visitors understand the changes to the borough as it matured from wilderness to industrial center and into a major tourist attraction. Tom witnessed many of these changes.

From the Heights

Tom grew up in what is currently called the Heights section of Jim Thorpe. When he was born in January of 1912, it was called Upper Mauch Chunk.

“We had two girls and four boys in my family,” said Tom. “I am the baby and the only one left.”

Like most families at the time, they had an outhouse in their yard and had city water piped to their house. In 1927, they had electrical lighting installed.

Tom’s family lived on North Street in the shadow of Mount Pisgah and the Switchback Railroad. This was a neighborhood of railroad workers.

“Mauch Chunk was a major rail center, then,” began Tom. “The Jersey Central alone operated sixty trains every day out of Mauch Chunk. They hauled coal, freight and passengers. The canals were running too.”

“The community was composed of working class people,” continued Tom. “The period of wealth peeked just before the 1900's. Coal was less and less in demand. But the railroads provided steady work until 1922 when we had a strike that lasted 11 months.”

Tom’s father was a caboose maintenance man for the Jersey Central. His father set a blue flag along the side of a train in the railway station area that is now the Carbon County Parking Lot.

“The blue flag was a safety signal,” explained Tom, “only the man that put it there could take it away.”

“My father was working under the caboose,” continued Tom. “Someone must have removed the flag. The engineer would have never moved the train if he saw the flag. My father’s neck was broken and he was paralyzed. He died two months later. It was just an accident, that's all there was to it.”

Tom graduated from Mauch Chunk High School in 1931. The building, next to the Mauch Chunk Museum, was converted first to a pocketbook factory and now functions as an apartment building.

In 1926, at the age of 14, Tom began an apprenticeship in the barbershop of Charles Witherich on Pine Street in Upper Mauch Chunk.

He worked there for 9-1/2 years. In 1936, Tom took over an existing barber shop at 5th and North in East Mauch Chunk. His shop operated for 55 years.

On New Year’s Day 1938, Tom married his wife, the former Bertha Hawk. Three years later, they bought the building that housed Tom’s shop and moved to East Mauch Chunk. In January, they will celebrate their 64th anniversary.

Return to the hood

As we prepared this story, I asked Tom to return to his old neighborhood for photographs. As we drove up North Street, Tom began to say, “I don’t believe it. This is amazing.”

It turns out, that although Tom is an expert on the history of the Upper Chunk area, he hasn’t been back to his boyhood neighborhood for 60 years.

As Tom left the car and looked around at his boyhood neighborhood, his jaw literally dropped. He looked around in total amazement. “The houses changed,” said Tom. “The fronts are different and they added porches.”

“I am in Wonderland,” continued Tom. “What a change in these homes! I don't know why I didn't come here before to see this.”

To a casual observer, this seems like a neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in 40 years. But, as it is 60 years since Tom last saw this street, it appeared to him to have undergone a major renovation. Strangely, Tom lives only a five minute drive away and he remains an active driver.

“All these houses belonged to people working on the railroad,” explained Tom. “They worked in the roundhouse and the car shops. They were locomotive engineers, conductors, fireman, and brakeman. Most worked on the Central Railroad. Some worked on the Switchback. As many as 1,200 railroad people worked here. They were mostly Germans and Irish.”

Shadow of the Switchback

“The Switchback railroad started maintenance runs in the beginning of May and on May 30 it would open to the public,” remembers Tom. “They first made the Engine House operational and fired the steam engines.”

In the early 1900’s, the Switchback operated open-air cars designed for about 50 tourists. Each car had a motorman in front and a brakeman/conductor in the rear. If there was trouble on the tracks, the motorman would see it first and apply the front brake. Then, the brakeman in the rear would set the rear brake to help the car stop.

Tom’s neighbor, John Brogan, was an engineer on a Switchback car. “I was about 12 years old,” said Tom. “Every Sunday, I would go down to the hollow where the Switchback car would wait for the Barney car. John would let me sneak onto the car while it was waiting for the Barney to come out of the pit. I had two or three minutes to hop on. There was a platform where you could step into the car without having any trouble.”

“I sat in the front with John. Once the Barney car connected, we began a five to ten minute climb to the top of Mount Pisgah. We sat in an inclined position as we went up slowly, maybe five miles per hour. At the top, the Barney would stop and the car would go by itself, all by gravity. Nobody pushed or did anything.”

Switchback Hollow becomes a Park

A 14-inch axle broke in the Engine House in 1933. It was the latest and most expensive of the repairs needed to keep the Switchback operational. The Depression had reduced ridership for the previous years. The operators decided to close the Switchback.

“You didn't have two nickels to rub together during the depression,” said Tom. “It went bankrupt, and in 1937, it was sold for $18,000.”

Excavated material, from construction of Route 209 and construction of the Jim Thorpe Junior High School was used to fill the hollow where the Switchback Barney pits once operated. Today, the area is a local playground called the Sam Miller Field.

We walked to the side of the field near the Pisgah Plane. “This is my old playground,” said Tom. “It was a hollow then.”

In the hollow, Tom and his friends played sandlot baseball and flew kites. “We had a ball, bat and gloves but no safety equipment,” he remembers.

From 1936 through 1937, Tom commuted from the Heights to his shop on the East side by bus. He took a shortcut across the hollow and ducked under the trestle in front of the Switchback. The commute wasn’t the same after the trestle was torn down in 1937. Tom moved to the East side in 1938 and hadn't been back since.