Jim Thorpe has just closed the book on October, the most popular month of the year for tourism in the borough, and while officials are taking some time to reflect, they’re also looking forward to what can be improved upon in 2022.

Michael Rivkin, president of the Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency, and Joe Schatz, Jim Thorpe police chief, said a “debriefing” meeting took place Wednesday and, as expected, parking and traffic were the leading points of discussion.

“I think the planning meetings we had leading up to the Fall Foliage Festival this year were wonderful and it helped improve on a lot of things, but it is like hitting a moving target when it comes to traffic and parking,” Rivkin said. “We were at times overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people, which was beyond expectation and our previous history. But the committee is already at work addressing some of the issues going forward to make it even more of a positive experience.”

Visitors came in record numbers during October. According to Schatz, 60,000 people came through the visitors center over that 31-day period. That compares to 130,000 to 135,000 for the first nine months of the year combined.

“It speaks for Jim Thorpe and its popularity,” Schatz said. “JTTA really didn’t do any advertising and those are the types of crowds we were seeing here.”

Busy streets were a welcome sight for Jim Thorpe resident Betty Lou McBride.

“A lot of people have worked hard and it’s really been about 40 years of advertising to get us here,” McBride said. “It’s nice to see the town look like this. Sure, we had six days of lousy traffic, but I’ll take it against the days of rundown buildings and nobody in town. I’m so proud of everyone who has been working so hard and the benefit it’s been to the town is incredible.”

In the months leading up to the festival, which was held the first three weekends of October in downtown Jim Thorpe, Schatz and Rivkin spoke highly of the coordination between JTTA and the borough.

Much of that planning, they said, paid off with improved traffic control downtown and a greater ease of entry into the Carbon County parking lot next to the train station.

“I think we made a lot of great progress compared to the past years,” Schatz said.

“The fire police that assisted us from throughout Carbon County did a tremendous job. We are still looking at ways to try and relieve some of that traffic coming into the borough.”

Some ideas discussed, he said, are the availability of overflow lots throughout the borough and parking apps to let people know where open spots exist and where the available lots are.

“Let’s face it, there are times when people are sitting on the Mansion House Hill for an hour and a half and I’d be pretty upset if I did that and then I got into town and there were no spaces and I had to keep driving through,” Schatz said.

A shuttle did run from Sam Miller Field and dropped visitors off at the Mauch Chunk Opera House and, in its inaugural year, the Jim Thorpe Trolley Company was operating throughout town. Officials, however, are hopeful to add other lots with shuttle access to the downtown area in 2022.