A Novel Solution

After World War II, prosperity lay elsewhere, and many people in Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk remained unemployed. To raise money to attract factories, Joe Boyle helped organize the grassroots Nickel-a-Week campaign, and he also hoped to merge the two towns to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Until 1953, the contributed nickels continued to add up, but industrialists stayed away and separatists prevailed. Then Joe Boyle seized a new opportunity when the widow of Olympic champion Jim Thorpe came looking for a place to bury her husband. In return for promises of publicity, tourism, and a specialized heart and cancer hospital, the two Mauch Chunks merged, changed their name to Jim Thorpe, PA., and used the nickels to build a mausoleum for Thorpe's body. Two towns became one, and Jim Thorpe became Carbon County's most famous non-resident.

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania · United States