{"product_id":"jim-thorpe-in-the-20th-century-9781531622947","title":"Jim Thorpe in the 20th Century","description":"Jim Thorpe in the 20th Century examines the causes and effects of a community's decision to relinquish its Native American name Mauch Chunk (\"Bear Mountain\") to become the town of Jim Thorpe. In the 19th century, Mauch Chunk rode a wave of prosperity, as coal shipping and tourism turned ordinary men into millionaires. In the 20th century, the mainstays of the town's economy began to tumble like dominoes: mule-drawn coal boats could not compete with the iron horse, ending Mauch Chunk's days as a canal town by 1922; the touristattracting Switchback Gravity Railroad, \u003cbr\u003eunable to afford parts, closed in 1932; the coal mines and working railroads collapsed, as industry, home heating, and trucking turned to petroleum. Downand-out by the mid-1900s, Mauch Chunk was looking for a means of saving itself when the widow of 1912 Olympian Jim Thorpe proposed a stranger-than-fiction solution.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Arcadia Publishing Library Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50418420678930,"sku":"9781531622947","price":23.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_0fd117c6-03f5-46cb-abf8-a5311503eda8.jpg?v=1729473319","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/jim-thorpe-in-the-20th-century-9781531622947","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}