Jim Thorpe Historic Downtown

About

Jim Thorpe is the kind of place that stops location scouts cold—a Victorian coal and railroad town wedged into a dramatic Lehigh Gorge canyon, with mansions perched on slopes above a town center of Italianate and Victorian Gothic commercial buildings that appear to have been preserved in amber. Called the 'Switzerland of America' by 19th-century tourists, the town offers European mountain-town visual drama with authentic American industrial history. The Pennsylvania Film Office promotes Jim Thorpe for its unique combination of architectural richness and natural setting: the Lehigh River gorge walls, the original Asa Packer mansion, and the operating railroad through the gorge all contribute to a visual package unavailable anywhere else in the Northeast. Period and contemporary productions both find the town adaptable.