[PDF] Jim Thorpe Mauch Chunk eBook

Author : John H. Drury
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 134 pages
File Size : 25,23 MB
Release : 2001-08-28
Category : Photography
ISBN : 1439611319

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Through an extraordinary collection of photographs, Jim Thorpe tells the story of not only the athlete but its famed coal-mining industry. What was originally named Mauch Chunk, Jim Thorpe was established on the Lehigh River as a shipping depot for anthracite coal in 1818 by Josiah White, a Philadelphia Quaker and brilliant engineer, and his trusted business partner, Erskine Hazard. By 1829, White and Hazard had founded the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and built an efficient transportation system that moved coal nine miles over the mountains to Mauch Chunk by Switchback Gravity Railroad, and 46 miles along the Lehigh Canal to Easton. With the arrival of the railroads, the Switchback became a major tourist attraction. As rail excursionists descended on Mauch Chunk to experience a hair-raising ride on America's first roller coaster and enjoy the magnificent scenery, the coal shipping town, billed by the railroads as "the Switzerland of America," became a tourist destination second in popularity only to Niagara Falls. In a story stranger than fiction, the town exchanged its name for the name of Jim Thorpe when the 1912 Olympic hero was laid to rest there in 1954. Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk) tells the story of the athlete and his burial, the Switchback Gravity Railroad, the Lehigh Canal, the social scene, and the town's Victorian legacy.

Author : John H. Drury
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 134 pages
File Size : 13,93 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 9780738509631

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Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, was established on the Lehigh River as a shipping depot for anthracite coal in 1818 by Josiah White, a Philadelphia Quaker and brilliant engineer, and his trusted business partner, Erskine Hazard. By 1829, White and Hazard had founded the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and built an efficient transportation system that moved coal nine miles over the mountains to Mauch Chunk by Switchback Gravity Railroad, and forty-six miles along the Lehigh Canal to Easton. With the arrival of the railroads, the Switchback became a major tourist attraction. As rail excursionists descended on Mauch Chunk to experience a hair-raising ride on America's first roller coaster and enjoy the magnificent scenery, the coal shipping town, billed by the railroads as "the Switzerland of America," became a tourist destination second in popularity to Niagara Falls. In a story stranger than fiction, the town exchanged its name for the name of Jim Thorpe when the 1912 Olympic hero was laid to rest there in 1954. Through an extraordinary collection of photographs, Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk) tells the story of the athlete and his burial, the Switchback Gravity Railroad, the Lehigh Canal, the social scene, and the town's Victorian legacy.

Author : John H. Drury
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 19,22 MB
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : 9780738538600

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Jim Thorpe in the 20th Century examines the causes and effects of a community's decision to relinquish its Native American name Mauch Chunk (“Bear Mountain”) to become the town of Jim Thorpe. In the 19th century, Mauch Chunk rode a wave of prosperity, as coal shipping and tourism turned ordinary men into millionaires. In the 20th century, the mainstays of the town's economy began to tumble like dominoes: mule-drawn coal boats could not compete with the iron horse, ending Mauch Chunk's days as a canal town by 1922; the touristattracting Switchback Gravity Railroad, unable to afford parts, closed in 1932; the coal mines and working railroads collapsed, as industry, home heating, and trucking turned to petroleum. Downand-out by the mid-1900s, Mauch Chunk was looking for a means of saving itself when the widow of 1912 Olympian Jim Thorpe proposed a stranger-than-fiction solution.

Author : Updyke, Rosemary K.
Publisher : Pelican Publishing
Page : 116 pages
File Size : 46,52 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Track and field athletes
ISBN : 9781455606740

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A biography of the American Indian known as one of the best all-round athletes in history for his accomplishments as an Olympic medal winner and as an outstanding professional football and baseball player.

Author : Richard Benyo
Publisher : University of Scranton Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,18 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Boys
ISBN : 9781589661660

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Jim Thorp never slept in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the town formerly known as Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk. But through a combination of ambition, necessity, and sheer luck, these small towns became the final resting place of the great American Indian Olympic champion and in 1954 they legally changed their name to permanently commemorate his burial. Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here, a treasury of tales from a 1950s boyhood in a town surrounded by the mountains of the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region, is a passport to a lost land of childhood adventure, featuring an ancient river, old mine shafts, canal locks, hobos camps, the remains of millionaires' mansions--and the hilarious antics of Richard Benyo and his buddies in the South Street Gang. This memoir brings the 1950s alive--just as The Little Rascals did for the Depression--with its renderings of afternoons spent with baseball cards, cardboard forts, BB guns, playground bullying. and that first illicit sip of beer. Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here is a memorable, nostalgic account of all the trials, tribulations, and the rites of passage of growing up in post-war America.

Author : Kate Buford
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 479 pages
File Size : 47,56 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0375413243

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Chronicles defining moments in the career of the preeminent American athlete, from his contributions to college football and gold-medal wins at the 1912 Olympics to his role in shaping professional football and baseball, in a portrait that also discusses his private struggles and political views.