Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania)
Meeting Of the Molly MaGuire Men (1874)
During our east coast tour this summer, we stopped by Mauch Chunk (now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania).
That’s the stomping grounds of the radical coal mining men known as the Molly Maguires.
The Molly Maguires were an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts, twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. This history remains part of local Pennsylvania lore and the actual facts much debated among historians.[1]
The little that’s left of that radical labor legacy has been whitewashed and is now overwhelmed by hordes of heavy old tourists.
But the town still retains charm – some sidewalk scenes:(we avoided the jail)
