Bear Mountain is a steep-sided ridge in eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, on the east bank of the Lehigh River opposite Jim Thorpe in Carbon County. Part of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, it stretches nearly ten miles from a bend in the river long envisioned by the Lenape as a bear’s snout to the heights above Penn Forest Reservoir. Rising sharply from the riverbank to elevations above 1,480 feet in little more than a mile, it forms a prominent backdrop to Jim Thorpe. Though sparsely settled, its importance is chiefly scenic and geographic, dominating the landscape above the Lehigh Gap and helping shape the dramatic river gorges and coal-region communities along the Lehigh.