Recently, when the borough's elementary school children were asked who founded their town, two of the responses were Jim Thorpe and Mark Chunk.
They are hardly alone. The town was established as Mauch Chunk in 1818 by Josiah White, the founder of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. In 1954, the east and west sides of the town merged to form a borough, and it was named Jim Thorpe in honor of the Native American Olympic athlete-whose body was laid to rest in the town but who during his life had never visited it.