As you climb the steep steps from Hazard Square in the center of Jim Thorpe and look up the hill to the mansion that, let’s face it, looms over the borough, you may get a sense of déjà vu if you have ever visited America’s most popular tourist destination – Disney World.

The Harry Packer Mansion, the model for Disney World's Haunted Mansion, is a bed-and-breakfast offering a variety of fun attractions.

The Harry Packer Mansion was the model for Disney’s Haunted Mansion and if you let your imagination run a bit, you might just see someone – or something – peeking at you from behind the curtains on the upper floors. Built by Asa Packer, the founder of Lehigh University and Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co, as a wedding gift for his son, the younger Packer’s home would in itself be reason enough to visit this photogenic little town on the Lehigh River.

The Harry Packer Mansion is open year-round as a bed-and-breakfast, it hosts murder-mystery dinners and has a great little wine bar on the front porch overlooking the town and river. In addition, Asa Packer’s own mansion is right next door and it is open through the summer months.

But Jim Thorpe has a lot more to offer than a mansion tour and the bicycle trails it has become known for in recent years. Once known as Mauch Chunk – literally, “sleeping bear,” Jim Thorpe is also no stranger to the tourism industry. It’s scenic setting and beautiful Victorian/Italianate architecture, the way it dovetails into the towering hills of the eastern Appalachian Mountains and the breath-taking views from high above the streets earned it the nickname “Switzerland of America” in the late 1800s, when it was second only to Niagara Falls as an American tourist destination.

The building at the base of the steps leading to the Packer mansions still bears the name “Hotel Switzerland.”

The town acquired its new name in the early 1950s when it accepted a bid from Jim Thorpe’s family to grant a burial place for the famous American Indian and Olympic champion in exchange for naming the town after him. The distinction didn’t bring the immediate travel dollars the town fathers were seeking in the middle of the 20th Century when they were trying to replace coal and the Lehigh railroad as an income base. That came through old-fashioned hard work and long years of rebuilding many of the fascinating structures and homes that make up the town.

Actually, it is something that happened long before Jim Thorpe’s burial that has brought a good deal of fame – infamy? – to the to old town of Mauch Chunk. It was the site of the controversial trial and hanging of several alleged members of the Molly Maguires, an Irish laborers society that fought for better and safer working conditions in the anthracite coal mines that constituted the major industry in Carbon and Schuylkill counties in the 19th century.

Carriage rides and great architecture really bring out the town's legacy as the "Switzerland of America."

Nineteen were hanged in 1877 on charges and evidence that today are widely believed to have been falsified by the mine owners and agents from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. One prisoner, believed to be Alexander Campbell, reportedly put his dirty hand on the wall of his cell in the old jail and said it would remain forever as a testament to his innocence. Despite repeated paintings and washings, the faint hand print is still said to be visible to visitors.

My wife and I visited on a crisp Saturday afternoon in mid-November and the crowds were pretty heavy on Broadway and around the Jim Thorpe Train Station, where visitors can buy tickets for a one-hour ride along the beautiful Lehigh River. The little shops and restaurants, which range from the Mauch Chunk Five and Ten to bookstores and gift/antique shops to the old Opera House and Mauch Chunk Museum offer a full day of activities for visitors. It reminded me a lot of New Hope – without the attitude and high prices.

What To Know: There are several websites for the different attractions in Jim Thorpe and I found it difficult to find one that was fairly inclusive. For the best results, I suggest going to http://www.jimthorpe.org/blog/, which has links to most of the popular attractions. Parking is available in a public lot by the train station.

If You Go: Check ahead to see what is open and current prices for the various attractions. Several of the attractions are purely seasonal and others, including many businesses and restaurants, run on seasonal schedules. And if you want to see the burial place of Jim Thorpe, you might want to visit soon. Thorpe’s descendants have filed a lawsuit seeking to remove his body and re-bury it in his native Oklahoma.

Facts: The story of the Molly Maguires, their infiltration by a Pinkerton detective and eventual arrest and collapse created international headlines at the time. The story was reproduced in a fictionalized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published as “Sherlock Holmes and The Valley of Fear.”