Jim Thorpe in the 20th Century
- Editore:
ARCADIA PUB (SC)
- Collana:
- Images of America (Arcadia Pub
- EAN:
9780738538600
- ISBN:
0738538604
- Pagine:
- 128
- Formato:
- Paperback
- Lingua:
- Inglese
Descrizione Jim Thorpe in the 20th Century
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.