Located on the western finish of Jim Thorpe, you&rsquoll discover a single of the most well known historic web sites in the Pocono Mountains: the Previous Jail Museum.
The Previous Jail Museum, known during its running many years as the Carbon County Jail, housed inmates from 1870 until 1995. Before long immediately after it shut, the jail was opened for community excursions and has been open to site visitors at any time considering that.
The Carbon County Jail is a stunning castle-like framework that was made by Edward Haviland, the son of John Haviland who developed the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It features 27 cells, a warden&rsquos home, a basement dungeon, and far more inside the construction.
Touring the jail has been near the best of my list of issues to do in PA for many years, so I was fired up to lastly have a likelihood to stop by in the late summer of 2022.
Tours of the jail depart routinely and, on superior-visitors weekend days, can be fairly active. In actuality, tickets occasionally offer out hours prior to the doorways are closed, so make positive to get there early to get your tickets as they are only bought in the gift store.
Tours of the Previous Jail Museum previous all over 30 minutes and are roughly divided into three areas: a online video, the major mobile block, and the dungeon. Right after the tour, people can then check out the mobile block and some of the aspect locations of the jail at their individual tempo. All explained to, most visitors will shell out all over forty five minutes below when their tour stars.
The jail&rsquos video is about ten minutes lengthy and provides an overview of the record of the jail, and, in particular, the Molly Maguires.
The Molly Maguires were a solution modern society of Irish coal miners who were being seeking to combat for superior and safer performing problems. In 1877-1879, 6 of them were hung in this jail on (very very likely) trumped-up costs.
The movie, as very well as a very good portion of the tour cover this attention-grabbing labor heritage from the location.
While the video clip is pretty nicely done, the Television set that it performs on is a little bit on the compact aspect. The audio could also be improved, particularly given that the narrator speaks in a thick Irish accent. Whilst I don&rsquot assume she is inherently difficult to realize, the rather lower quantity merged with the accent means that you have to pay thorough awareness to recognize almost everything in the movie.
Hopefully, they will get a relatively larger Tv set and a greater seem system in the long run to make improvements to the encounter in this part of the tour.
At the time the online video is completed, guides choose you into the principal portion of the jail. This aspect of the tour contains both the major ground of the cell block and the dungeon that&rsquos in the basement, with the precise order various relying on the other excursions that are going on at the time.
The dungeon is found in the basement right below the primary mobile block and is wherever prisoners ended up housed in solitary confinement from the earliest days of the jail until finally the 1980s.
The space is fairly dim, however a couple of small lights present a bit of illumination in the principal area. Acquiring your cell cell phone flashlight with you will aid you see into the genuine cells in this portion of the museum.
While down below, guides offer you a little bit of background about this region, and both how and why prisoners were held in this place. It surely didn&rsquot seem like a enjoyable place to obtain by yourself.
The primary mobile block of the Previous Jail Museum is a two-story room that functions more than twenty cells.
In the centre of the place, a recreated gallows sits on the correct location exactly where 6 of the Molly Maguires were being hung in the 1870s. Guides offer you a good deal of background about this place, both equally linked to the Molly Maguires and to other tales from the history of the jail.
Even owning frequented a lot of other historic jails all around PA (these as SCI Cresson and the Old Jail in Bradford County) I identified the tales here to be extremely exciting.
At the time the tutorial is completed providing a bit of heritage, visitors are permitted to check out the cell block, as properly as some of the other places of the jail.
While I actually appreciated searching in the cells, some of which had household furniture to showcase what it would have been like to have been an inmate there, the most fascinating mobile is #17.
In this cell, it is mentioned that there is a mysterious handprint that was still left by a single of the Molly Maguires as he proclaimed his innocence just prior to his execution. According to local lore, irrespective of this place staying painted over numerous situations, his ghostly handprint continues to be.
Whilst this is very likely nothing more than a area legend, it&rsquos nonetheless an exciting story, and the darkish place on the wall does seem to be a handprint.
Unfortunately, you can&rsquot enter the mobile, which usually means that you can only check out it from a couple of feet absent and from the aspect. You also aren&rsquot permitted to choose pictures of it, but you can obtain images of it in the gift shop or see a huge photo of it on exhibit at the close by Mauch Chunk Museum (where by my photograph above arrives from).
The other spots of the museum that you can check out at your have tempo contain the higher stages of the warden&rsquos household (which at the time of my stop by contained only vacant rooms), the visitation location, the jail kitchen area, and the females&rsquos jail.
A Couple of Notes about Going to
There are two additional matters I desired to make be aware of for browsing.
Very first of all, other than a several handicapped parking spots in their lot, there is no nearby parking. When viewing, you&rsquoll have to have to spend to park in the decreased part of town near the coach station and stroll to the Aged Jail. It&rsquos about a 50 percent-mile wander from the teach station to the museum and is slightly uphill.
Also, even with possessing handicapped parking, there is no easy accessibility into the historic developing for these with mobility troubles. On go to the website , if you can deal with a couple techniques, you can at minimum see the key portion of the building.