When my daughter was young, she had a wooden building-block set that she mixed and matched to create an idyllic American town. I was reminded of those renditions when I visited Jim Thorpe, Pa., a stunningly intact Victorian borough — about 120 miles from Manhattan — wedged in a gorge along the banks of the Lehigh River.
This is a town that looks more like a replica of a town than the former coal-mining-turned-outdoor-amusement paradise that it is.
By the time you snake down Route 209 South into Jim Thorpe’s nexus, Hazard Square, you understand why the town’s moniker is “the Switzerland of America.” And you get why USA Today and Rand McNally crowned it the fourth-most beautiful town in the country.
People who live here love the town’s imposing clock tower and the melodic church bells. They talk about how ghosts might live in the Old Jail Museum (where a group of coal miners known as the Molly Maguires were hanged). They are rapt with the town’s lore and stirred by its magic. But at the end of the day, Jim Thorpe (pop. 4,781) is also a livable, lively town with restaurants, shops and entertainment.
But about that rather curious name.
Originally called Mauch Chunk (a Lenape Indian phrase for “sleeping bear”), the town became a mining and coal-transportation center in the early 19th century. Following the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe’s death in 1953, his widow, Patricia, was upset when the government of his native Oklahoma wouldn’t erect a memorial to honor him. Patricia got wind that Mauch Chunk was looking for a gimmick to attract tourism and a deal was made to rename the town, erect a monument and bury him there with mounds of soil from Oklahoma.
The name change didn’t do the trick. By the 1970s, the town had fallen into decline. But cheap and beautiful housing stock brought a new group of prospectors. Among those were second-home owners, many of whom have turned into full-time residents. Some have put down deeper roots and have opened restaurants and shops.
Former New Yorkers Victor Stabin, an artist and illustrator, and his wife, Joan Morykin, are one such couple. They bought a house in Jim Thorpe and also snapped up a 15,000-square-foot building on West Broadway, one of the town’s main thoroughfares, which they turned into a studio for Stabin and the couple’s farm-to-table restaurant, Flow.
Stabin and Morykin — who have two young daughters — say leaving the city for a small town made dreams they didn’t even know they had possible.
“Living a more financially flexible life has allowed me to be creative in new ways,” says Stabin, who adds that much of his energy in New York City was spent on keeping up with the bills. “My wife wanted to open a restaurant, so she did. Life here is like a big open field where we get to do what we want to do.”
Realtor Bonnie Hoffman of Mountain Vista Realty says between 5 percent and 10 percent of the town’s residents hail from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They want a weekend playground, and this “gateway to the Poconos” offers them that — at incredibly affordable prices.
Brooklynites Nancy Tolan and her husband, Robert Mapa, recently bought a 1,500-square foot, three-bedroom, one-bathroom 1890s house on West Broadway for $110,000.
“I love the life you can have here,” says Tolan, an avid cyclist. “I’ve got the river, the [Mauch Chunk] lake, a great little town that I can walk to. Everyone sits on their porches. It’s like the best of Brooklyn without the worst of Brooklyn.”
Hoffman says you can pick up a 1,200- to 3,000-square-foot Victorian on Broadway or West Broadway for between $135,000 to $300,000. The Rendon House bed and breakfast on Broadway, one of the grand Victorians on “Millionaires Row” dating back to the town’s mining heyday, is on the market for $390,000. Houses in the “Heights,” behind Broadway on North, South and Center avenues, go from $70,000 for a semidetached home to $180,000 for a single-family house. For more land and privacy, houses in Glen Onoko Estates, on the outskirts of town near Onoko Falls, range from $120,000 to $300,000.
Beyond its attractiveness, the town offers a decent art scene, the Opera House (which puts on live music and theater), Penn’s Peak for big musical acts, several restaurants and bars and a supermarket. Big-box stores like Walmart and JCPenney are 12 miles northwest in Hazelton.
Then there are all the outdoor activities: white-water rafting on the Lehigh River; hiking at Lehigh Gorge State Park; Skirmish Paintball 12 miles north in Albrightsville; or you can bump along on an all-terrain military vehicle called a Pinzgauer on rugged land on the town’s outskirts. And the Blue Mountain ski area is 30 minutes southeast.
Train enthusiasts can hop a ride on the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway, a 1920s open-windowed coach that rattles along hairpin turns along the river.
And gamblers can hit Mount Airy Casino Resort, 45 minutes northeast.
Tolan, a social worker, said she originally heard about Jim Thorpe from a colleague. Now she’s settling into her house and spreading the word.
“Anyone who comes up here to visit starts thinking about buying a house, too,” she says.