Josiah White founded the town of Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, as a transportation and corporate headquarters for the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. Between 1820 and 1855, LC&N had a monopoly on the Lehigh coal trade.

This 1845 drawing of Mauch Chunk shows the Lehigh River wharf and the Historic District. Note the inlet from the river to the original Navigation Building. The recently built Switchback backtrack is shown on the right ascending the Mt. Pisgah Plane. (Image courtesy of Charles Wildoner who received it as a wedding present from the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company.)

In 1855, Asa Packer completed the Lehigh Valley Railroad to Mauch Chunk, ending Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company’s monopoly on the transport of Lehigh Coal. Following the Civil War, railroads became the engine for an expanding America and railroad magnates like Packer became rich and powerful.

Engine #71, the Montana, one of 1,000 locomotives run by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. When this photo was taken in 1865, the LVRR was poised to gain control the Lehigh coal transportation business.

In 1827, Lehigh Coal & Navigation connected their anthracite coalmine to the Lehigh River by rail. The Mauch Chunk Switchback was the first permanent railroad in the U.S., running for over 100 years. The Mount Pisgah Plane was added in 1843 to automate the return of the coal cars. After the Hauto Tunnel allowed railroads access to the coalmines, the Switchback became a tourist railroad, the first roller coaster, and began the town’s transition to a tourist economy.

Part 1 – The Glory Days

Today, Jim Thorpe, the county seat of Carbon County, is a tourist destination. Nestled in a valley flanked by mountains on three sides, a pristine river dividing its major communities and a sparkling creek cascading through a stone archway beneath the downtown, this Victorian town, among the largest listed on the National Historic Register is—well, frankly, romantic.

Its hills beckon hikers and bikers, its streams are alive with rafters, kayakers and anglers, and its streets are a summertime Mecca for antiquers and sightseers.

Though the days of coal and railroading are gone, the town seems frozen in time, a virtual 1880 Brigadoon revealing itself a century and a quarter later.

But would these same tourists have come to Jim Thorpe fifty years ago? Many think not. Then, the Lehigh River was an open sewer. The mountains were blackened and acidified by soot from bituminous coal-fired steam engines—as was the river and the homes fronting the river on both sides of the town, once called Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk.

Forest fires started from sparks from these engines were a constant threat as was flooding from both the Lehigh River and the Mauch Chunk Creek. Fifty years ago, the downtown area sustained heavy damage from flooding.

The town suffered an extended depression as its lifeblood industry, coal transport, had ceased and with few jobs remaining, people left the area in search of work.

But around the turn of the century, only fifty years earlier, Mauch Chunk was the place to be to live the good life. The coal transportation business was good and supported capacity operation by canal and rail. Already, the canal system was overshadowed by the railroads. Soon, automobiles and trucks would overshadow the railroads, and coal would be supplanted by oil.

Pioneers Become Entrepreneurs

After Phillip Ginder told Jacob Weiss about his discovery of stone coal, as anthracite coal was then called, on Sharp Mountain, current Summit Hill, Weiss and others unsuccessfully formed companies to mine the coal, transport it, and market it in Philadelphia.

Around 1820, Josiah White formed what would become the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to mine and transport the Lehigh coal. LC&N operated the Sharp Mountain mine, built a road to the mine, and shipped the coal in barges over the shallow Lehigh River through an ingenious system of collapsible dams called Bear Trap Locks. The road was soon improved with the earliest permanent railroad – the Mauch Chunk Switchback, and along the Lehigh River, a canal and slackwater navigation system was built.

By 1829, LC&N controlled every aspect of the Lehigh coal trade from their headquarters in Mauch Chunk. By 1837, it expanded the canal system northward via an Upper Division to White Haven and began construction on a railroad to the Wyoming Valley coalfields.

Fortune Favors Railroads

LC&N’s good fortune changed when, in 1841, a flood damaged much of the Upper Division. It was rebuilt, but after a second flood in 1862 destroyed the Upper Division, it was abandoned in favor of a railroad.

A railroad was chosen by LC&N because its transportation rival, Asa Packer’s Lehigh Valley Railroad, had already proven itself and had been taking business away from LC&N. LC&N’s extended its railroad, the Lehigh & Susquehanna, to Easton where it joined with the Central Railroad of New Jersey to compete with Packer.

The young railroad industry proved itself by transporting coal during the Civil War. Following the war, the railroads became America’s most powerful industry. Railroads expanded both in trackage and in types of business—buying up many of the coal lands.

By 1870, railroads controlled America and Mauch Chunk was a railroad hub. The town was wealthy with millionaires living along Broadway on a section now known as “Millionaire’s Row.”

Asa Packer built an Italianate mansion for himself, and nearby, a Victorian mansion for his son, Harry. On Race Street, Packer help build St. Mark’s Church and constructed Stone Row—elegant housing for his executives.

Times Were Changing

When Carbon County was formed in 1843, Mauch Chunk became the county seat—largely because LC&N contributed a courthouse and a jail. These were soon destroyed by fire and replaced. The town prospered as the economic and political center of Carbon County.

Schools, churches and a theater were built. By the end of the 1880s, Mauch Chunk was a magnificent Victorian town. Then building construction began to slow—partially because the town was running out of room. With mountains on three sides and a river and creek flowing between the mountains, there was nowhere to expand.

But the town’s economy was also beginning to change. When a direct rail connection to the mines became available with the opening of the Hauto Tunnel, the Mauch Chunk Switchback, the original “missing link” in LC&N’s system for bringing coal to market, ceased operations as a coal hauler.

Passengers had always enjoyed riding the Switchback. In 1872, the Switchback reinvented itself as a tourist railroad—setting a pattern of conversion from industrial use to tourism that would be repeated one hundred years later.

Coal’s Fading Glory

Meanwhile in 1859, oil was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It was processed into kerosene and used to fuel oil lamps. Soon, this easy to handle, low ash, clean burning fuel was replacing coal in the heating market.

Just after the turn of the last century, with the demand for coal slacking, and trucks and automobiles increasing in popularity, the railroads saw a reduction in business and began to reduce service.

World War I temporarily created increased demand both for coal and rail transport. Anthracite coal shipments reached a post-World War I high in 1923 and then began a steady decline. Cutbacks in the railroads and mines led to labor unrest and the resulting strikes created spot anthracite shortages during winter months. This caused even more customers to replace coal with alternative fuels.

Although railroad passenger traffic had increased fifty per cent between 1910 and 1920, it declined thirty per cent between 1920 and 1928. Between 1900 and 1930, automobile ownership had climbed from 14,000 to over 23 million.

Railroads were cutting back by ceasing service on non-profitable branches. In 1932, the Central Railroad of New Jersey stopped excursions to Mauch Chunk and closed the Mauch Chunk Switchback.

Mauch Chunk was unprepared for the transition to the automobile. Set between three mountains and a river, and well served by two railroads, it had neither developed nor had sufficient space to build a modern road through town. To build Route 209, the existing Lehighton to Mauch Chunk road had to be closed for a year. The Mauch Chunk Switchback, which had been operating at a loss and suffering from years of poor maintenance, ceased operation on Oct. 29, 1933.

On Sept. 2, 1937, the Switchback Gravity Railroad was sold for scrap. A young reporter, Joe Boyle, covered the story. Boyle would later lead the effort to unite the boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk into Jim Thorpe. Thus began the hurting days of the Depression.