If you find yourself in Jim Thorpe, you can walk through the house of the man who helped build it in the winter of 1832. Asa Packer left Connecticut and headed to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. That's what Jim Thorpe used to be called. Packer had heard that men were needed to work coal barges on the Lehigh Canal. His family later joined him.
20 years later, the canal system had become slow. So in what was a risky move, Asa Packer purchased nearly all of an unfinished railroad, then expanded it, creating the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Eventually, the Bethlehem Iron Company. Later Bethlehem Steel was created to supply the rails. Asa Packer went on to give millions of dollars to the area. He also donated money to create a new university that turned into Lehigh University.
His home still stands in Jim Thorpe. And in 1912, his daughter willed the home and all its contents to the borough.
