In the throws of the Depression, at midnight on Oct. 29, 1931, th Mauch Chunk Transit Company trolley cars ceased operations. Without missing a step, the buses of the Mauch Chunk Transportation Company were up and running the next morning at 6 a.m.

John A. Marzen founded the MCTC, becoming its first president and treasurer. Trolley service had been introduced to downtown Mauch Chunk in 1893, which expanded its route to most of the town and connected to neighboring towns over the next decade. A trolley connected with Lehighton, going over Flagstaff Mountain and opening up the vista for development of an amusement park. The trolley also connected with the Switchback Gravity Railroad for travel to Summit Hill.

A combination of increasing maintenance costs, reduced spending during the Depression, the improvement of roads, and declining ridership due to the popularity of the automobile, made operation of railed passenger service unprofitable. The Switchback and the Mauch Chunk Transit Company, which had started as the Carbon County Electric Railway Company and had undergone several mergers and name changes, ceased operations.

That morning of Oct. 29, 1931, the MCTC rolled out its two 21-passenger buses, each painted Mauch Chunk Transit Company in blue lettering on a white background. The buses were purchased from, and the first drivers were trained, by William Beighe.

The first bus left the East Mauch Chunk garage near John Marzen’s house on Center and Ninth and crossed the Lehigh River bridge to be at its initiation point, the Carbon County Courthouse, at 6 a.m. It departed at 6:03 a.m. and, promptly at 6:30 p.m., the second bus arrived.

The bus route headed up Broadway to take the bus route to the Heights, return to the Courthouse, then cross the Lehigh River bridge to East Mauch Chunk, and head up Center, then North, to the terminal.

There were two shifts, four drivers for the two buses. The original drivers were: Henry Haak, Fred Boyett, Erskine Solomon, and Jimmy Hines. John A. Marzen, the manager, and would drive a bus if a driver was sick.

Leonard “Lenny” F. Marzen, 88, was president of the MCTC from 1953 to 1996. He became president upon the retirement of his father John A. Marzen. “They started at 6 a.m. and worked until 2:45 p.m.  The second bus would be there at 3:15 p.m. and that bus changed shift. He then worked until 12:15 a.m.,” he said. “The fare was a nickel for children and ten cents for adults.”

In 1936, he MCTC began charter bus service with two 21-passenger tour buses, and in 1938, it expanded into the school bus transportation business. Eventually, it would employ 28 school buses serving the Jim Thorpe School District, Carbon-Lehigh Intermediate Unit, Carbon County Vocational Technical School, Marian Catholic High School, St. Joseph’s and Immaculate Conception Parish Schools, Carbon County Rural Transportation System and employees of Mack Trucks. From 1991 to 1994, under an agreement with LANTA, it provided bus service for the greater Slate Belt and Nazareth, Easton and Bethlehem.

Born in 1919 in Nesquehoning, Lenny Marzen’s family moved to East Mauch Chunk when he was three years old. He was 14 years old when his father started the bus company. After completing eighth grade, he joined his father’s company in 1935 as a helper in the maintenance department. “I started cleaning the buses, and greasing and changing oil,” he said. “I worked my way into becoming a mechanic. You couldn’t drive a bus until you were 21 years old.”

Marzen became a mechanic. “We used to do all our own mechanical work,” he said. “I’d pull the engine out, take it apart, and put in new piston rings or whatever.”

During the years of World War II, the bus company provided service using the fuel that was rationed. During snowfalls, they used a Jeep to clear roads for the buses. In 1933 and 1969, the bus company braved the floods that caused Mauch Chunk Creek to over flow Broadway.

In 1953, when his father retired, Lenny took over the company, assuming the positions previously held by his father of president, treasurer and manager of the Mauch Chunk Transportation Company. In the following year, when the towns of East Mauch Chunk and Mauch Chunk merged into the Borough of Jim Thorpe, Marzen changed the name of the bus company to the Jim Thorpe Transportation Company. At the time, the company had a fleet of 22 school buses and two charter buses.

In 1966, the fixed route bus line carried 156,000 passengers and earned $71,000 with expenses of $65,000.

In 1982, Marzen purchased the Henry Erschen Bus Company, founded 1947, from the widow of Henry Erschen. Erschen had a bus fleet and garage in Berlinsville, a suburb of Walnutport. The purchase included PUC and ICC authority to provide motorcoach service across the US and Canada. Daily service to Atlantic City casinos began in November 1983, with service expanding to five buses.

In 1984, Marzen purchased four new American Eagle buses with air conditioning and video systems. He hired Barry Hoch of Nazareth to paint murals on the rear windows of these buses. The four murals were: the athlete Jim Thorpe, downtown Jim Thorpe from Flagstaff Mountain, downtown Jim Thorpe showing the Carbon County Courthouse, and the Canadian Pacific locomotive #972 steam engine owned by George Hart that was maintained at the Jim Thorpe Railroad Station.

“We had a chartered bus trip to Canada,” Marzen explained. “On the way back, in the Stroudsburg area, a car pulls beside the bus.”

“The woman driver of the car was waving to the driver to stop. She told him that she was so thrilled and excited when she saw the picture of the train on the back window.”

“Her father used to be the engineer on that train. She told the driver to wait because she wanted to take a photograph of it.”

In 1985, the JTTC lost its school bus contracts and in May of that year got out of the business. It had five full time and 32 part time employees.

In the 1980s, the LANTA point-to-point minivan service for seniors and handicapped was introduced. In 1984, ridership on the JTTC bus line was 68,000 riders annually. By 1987, it decreased to 46,000 riders.

To keep the buses operating, the JTTC received subsidies under the Rural Transportation funding. A conflict arose between the subsidized LANTA and the subsidized JTTC bus line—which serviced the entire public, not just the seniors and handicapped.

Until then, the JTTC charged a quarter for adults and ten cents for kids—the only small town bus company in Pennsylvania that provided daily bus services for 25 cents a trip. Against the wishes of Marzen, the Commissioners raised the fare to fifty cents, causing the ridership to fall further.

The Carbon County Commissioners voted to discontinue the JTTC subsidy. Marzen closed operations of the inter-borough bus service on June 30, 1987.

In 1990, Marzen re-engineered his business, opening a new division, Lehigh Valley Motorcoach with a fleet of ten 47-passenger motorcoaches, a 36-passenger coach and a 14-passenger van. The bus business closed in 1996, after 65 years of operation.

In addition to Leonard’s tenure as president since 1953, his wife, Margaret served as secretary since 1960. Other company officers included their sons, Thomas who joined the firm in 1882 as vice president of Operations and Maintenance, and Leonard Jr. who joined the business in 1983 and served as vice president of Sales and Marketing.

The Jim Thorpe Transportation Company  was one of the oldest bus companies in Pennsylvania and a charter member of the Pennsylvania Bus Association where Leonard Marzen served as president and member of the executive board.

For a school project, Lenny’s granddaughter, Anne Marie Marzen, was asked to create a Biography Poster Report. She chose to design it around her granddad. One question she was asked to answer was,  “If the person’s story was turned into a movie, what would you call it?”

She wrote, “Busman on the Go.”