Asa Packer Mansion

Asa Packer arrived in the Lehigh Valley as a young carpenter and boat builder working the canal that carried anthracite coal down from the mountains. He grasped early that the future belonged not to canals but to railroads, and he gambled much of what he had on building a line up the Lehigh Gorge. That line became the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and it made him one of the richest and most powerful men in the state.

Packer was more than a businessman. He served in the state legislature and in Congress, gave generously, and in 1865 founded Lehigh University in nearby Bethlehem, endowing it so that the sons of working families could study engineering and the sciences. When he built his mansion on the hill above town in 1861, it was meant to signal both his wealth and his standing as the first citizen of Mauch Chunk.

The mansion is a showcase of high-Victorian taste, from its carved staircase and rich woodwork to gasoliers, marble, and a dining-room ceiling painted to imitate carved relief. Family portraits, imported furniture, and everyday objects remain where they were used, which is what gives the house its unusual sense of a lived-in home rather than a set of empty rooms.

That survival was no accident of luck alone. The house passed to the town of Mauch Chunk, and a local group has cared for it ever since, keeping the original contents intact and opening the rooms to visitors in the warmer months. Beside it stands a second house Packer built for his son Harry, itself an ornate Queen Anne landmark.

The town below the mansion was long called Mauch Chunk, a name drawn from a Lenape phrase understood to mean bear mountain, for the sleeping-bear shape of a nearby ridge. This valley is the ancestral homeland of the Lenape, also called the Delaware, whose descendant communities continue elsewhere today after removal from the region. The town grew rich on coal, on the gravity railroad that hauled it, and on the tourists who came to ride that railroad for thrills.

In 1954 the neighboring boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk merged and took a new name to honor Jim Thorpe, the Native American Olympic champion and one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century, whose remains were brought here. The renamed town leaned into its beauty and its history, and today its steep streets, Victorian storefronts, and river setting draw visitors year round.

Autumn is the signature season here, when the wooded walls of the Lehigh Gorge turn gold and red and the town fills for its fall festivals. The mansion tours, the excursion trains, and the trails along the river all come alive as the leaves turn, and the hilltop porch gives one of the best views of the color.

Spring and summer bring rafting and biking in the gorge, warm evenings in the town's cafes and shops, and easy walking on the rail-trail that follows the old railroad grade. Winter is quiet and often snowy, the brick streets and church spires dusted white, though the mansion itself closes for the cold months, so plan a visit to it for the warmer part of the year.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.