handprint on a jail cell wall. Leg bones found in a closet. A courthouse modeled after Big Ben. For those who walk the streets of Jim Thorpe with guide Jo Lynn Gazo, history is never just a story. It’s around every corner, and sometimes under your feet.

The Jim Thorpe Rotary Club’s Historical Walking Tour winds through the heart of the borough’s downtown for roughly an hour, tracing a route that once served as the final walk of condemned Molly Maguires from the courthouse to the gallows.

“When my husband and I roll into a town, that’s the first thing he asks: Do you have a walking tour?” Gazo, who developed and leads the tours, said. “If you’re going to go up to the old Carbon County Jail, you kind of want that backstory.”

Courthouse

The tour begins at the Carbon County Courthouse, 4 Broadway, itself a lesson in local ambition. Carbon County was carved out of Monroe and Northampton counties in 1843, and Gazo credits railroad and coal baron Asa Packer with making sure Jim Thorpe, then known as Mauch Chunk, landed the county seat.

“Asa Packer did go down to Harrisburg, and of course he threw his weight around quite a bit,” she said.

The current courthouse is the third to stand on the site. The first, built on land donated by Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company in the 1840s, was destroyed by fire in 1849. Its replacement was designed to resemble a temple of justice, but it was eventually torn down for a mix of practical and superstitious reasons.

“People say the bad mojo of the Molly Maguire trials kind of left its mark, and the people of Carbon County said let’s just tear down this courthouse because we want to get rid of that bad mojo,” Gazo said.

Architects Lewis Jacoby and Herman Riebe designed the current courthouse, which was modeled after Big Ben and completed in 1893. Before photography was practical, the pair made repeated trips overseas to sketch and measure the tower by hand.

The Inn at Jim Thorpe

A short walk from the courthouse stands the Inn at Jim Thorpe, 24 Broadway, a building whose survival was far from guaranteed. Originally constructed in the 1830s as the Swan Hotel, it burned to the ground in 1849 along with much of the town. It was rebuilt as the America’s Hotel to coincide with the country’s centennial, and at its peak welcomed guests including Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt.

By the 1960s, the building had fallen into disrepair and landed on the borough’s demolition list. John Drury, an entrepreneur who arrived with his family in the 1980s, had other ideas.

“He went to the library, researched what it looked like back in the day, and he took it back to its original glory,” Gazo said. “You can see the tintype ceiling. He researched the original woodwork.”

Today the inn often serves as a lodging stop for performers headed to nearby Penn’s Peak, and Gazo said reviews from musicians who have stayed there reflect its restored character.

Jim Thorpe National Bank

From the inn, the tour moves to the Jim Thorpe National Bank, 12 Broadway, founded in 1840 by coal boss Morgan Powell, who owned several mines in the region. Powell, Gazo explained, eventually grew tired of less secure arrangements for his earnings.

“He got tired of sticking that money underneath his mattress and needed a firm and secure place to store his money,” she said.

The bank has stood through multiple renovations and contains a vault visitors can sometimes photograph themselves in front of, Gazo noted.

Treasure Shop

Among the more unusual stops is the Treasure Shop on Broadway, 44 Broadway, where original owner Betty Lou McBride, one of the town’s pioneering preservationists, once discovered something unexpected while cleaning out a closet during renovations. The building had previously served as a furniture shop, and furniture makers of that era commonly doubled as casket makers.

“She found leg bones in a closet,” Gazo said. State police sent the remains to a crime lab, which determined they were not from the current century. McBride was asked what she wanted to do with them.

“She took them back,” Gazo said. “They’re still in a closet.”

Dimmick Memorial Library

The Dimmick Memorial Library, 54 Broadway, built in the English country style, comes with its own family drama. Milo Dimmick, son of the county’s first district attorney, was by Gazo’s description a man of considerable leisure — fond of women, wine, song and poetry — until his father issued an ultimatum.

“Dad said you need to get out of my basement,” she said. Milo’s solution was to ask his father to fund an English country-style library, where he became one of Carbon County’s first librarians.

General Albright’s House

One of the more colorful stops on Millionaires’ Row is the home of Civil War Gen. Charles Albright, 66 Broadway, and Gazo said the stories it holds range from petty domestic rivalry to courtroom intimidation. Albright’s wife, according to tour lore, repeatedly requested larger windows on the home’s facade — not for the light, but to antagonize her sister-in-law who lived directly across the street.

“The bigger the windows, the more prominent a character you were back in the day,” Gazo said.

Albright was a vocal abolitionist. He reserved a particular contempt, however, for the Irish. During the Molly Maguire trials, he reportedly arrived at the courthouse carrying a sword and scabbard on his hip, intent on rattling the all-German-speaking jury.

The house is also said to be haunted. Gazo noted that residents occasionally report hearing the sound of boots on the floors — which she leaves for visitors to interpret as they choose.

Dolan House and Mauch Chunk Opera House

The Queen Anne Victorian known as the Dolan House, 5 W. Broadway, carries a medical footnote that tends to get a reaction. The home belonged to a Dr. Dolan, who is credited locally with discovering a remedy for croup. His prescription: opium and honey.

The home was recently purchased by a couple from Nashville.

Just down the block, the Mauch Chunk Opera House, 14 W. Broadway, anchors what Gazo calls Millionaires’ Row. Built in the 1870s and 1880s by a consortium of the town’s wealthiest residents — among them Harry Packer, William Sayre and William Butler — the venue was born of a simple frustration: Jim Thorpe’s elite did not want to travel to Hazleton and Allentown for a good show.

“They decided to actually get together, put their money together, and build this gorgeous opera house,” Gazo said.

The venue hosted acts such as Charlie Chaplin and Al Jolson before going dark during both World Wars. It later became a movie house, then a purse warehouse for J.C. Penney before being restored in the late 1990s and early 2000s by the DeGiosio family, Dan Hugos and the Mauch Chunk Historical Society.

“It kills me to think that these white box trucks were literally backing up, taking merchandise to various J.C. Penney distribution centers as well as stores,” Gazo said.

Today the venue hosts tribute bands and comedians.

Mauch Chunk Museum and the Switchback

The Mauch Chunk Museum, 41 W. Broadway, is housed in a former Methodist church and holds an unexpected piece of American amusement park history. The museum contains a model of the Switchback Railroad, the gravity-powered coal transport line that ran from Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk in the 19th century. Gazo said the connection between that utilitarian railroad and Coney Island’s famous roller coasters is more direct than most people realize.

“The people who built the cosmic roller coaster had come and rode the switchback up in Summit Hill,” she said. “From what I heard, it was not a good experience. There were no safety regulations, people wound up bumped up and bruised — but of course that cosmic roller coaster was inspired by the switchback.”

The museum also offers a virtual tour of Old Mauch Chunk, the name — meaning “sleeping bear” in the Lenape language — that the borough carried before it was renamed in 1954 to honor the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, who is buried there.

Gingerbread House

Around the corner, the Gingerbread House, 83 W. Broadway, a Victorian home built in the 1880s to house Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns who came from Germany to teach at Immaculate Conception School — is another highlight of the route. The last nun died in the late 1990s. The building later became a bed-and-breakfast before returning to private use, with the marble altar converted into a fireplace.

“It is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been,” Gazo said of an occasion when she was invited inside during a tour. “They have maintained the integrity of the original convent.”

Old Jail

No stop draws more intrigue than the former Carbon County Jail, 128 W. Broadway, where a handprint pressed into a cell wall by condemned Molly Maguire Alexander Campbell remains one of Jim Thorpe’s most debated artifacts.

The Molly Maguires, Irish labor activists who immigrated to Pennsylvania’s coal country in the mid-1800s, were met with deep-seated prejudice, Gazo said. With no labor unions, no workers’ compensation and no safety net for injured miners, they turned to increasingly extreme tactics — from sending small black coffins to mine bosses with notes reading “You’re next,” to sabotaging railroad tracks, to murder.

“The same people they were trying to escape in England and Ireland were their bosses,” she said.

Tried at the Carbon County Courthouse, the convicted men were marched down Broadway to the jail — the same route the walking tour follows today. Several were hanged there, and it was in one of those cells that Campbell pressed his palm into the plaster and made his declaration of innocence.

According to Gazo, Campbell declared that if he was innocent, the print would remain there forever. The Travel Channel later tested the impression and found human skin cells, placing the probability of its authenticity at around 5%.

Tour details

All proceeds from the tours benefit the Jim Thorpe community through the Rotary Club. Tours depart from the front of the Carbon County Courthouse on Thursdays and Fridays at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 10 a.m. and noon. Adult tickets are $18; children’s tickets are $7. Tickets are available at events.ticketleap.com.