Situated on the western finish of Jim Thorpe, you&rsquoll obtain one of the most common historic web pages in the Pocono Mountains: the Old Jail Museum.
The Previous Jail Museum, acknowledged throughout its running many years as the Carbon County Jail, housed inmates from 1870 till 1995. Shortly right after it closed, the jail was opened for public excursions and has been open up to website visitors at any time considering the fact that.
The Carbon County Jail is a attractive castle-like construction that was built by Edward Haviland, the son of John Haviland who intended the Eastern Condition Penitentiary in Philadelphia. click here to investigate , a warden&rsquos residence, a basement dungeon, and a lot more inside the structure.
Touring the jail has been near the prime of my list of items to do in PA for many decades, so I was enthusiastic to lastly have a prospect to stop by in the late summer season of 2022.
Tours of the jail leave often and, on substantial-visitors weekend times, can be rather active. In simple fact, tickets occasionally promote out hours right before the doorways are shut, so make absolutely sure to arrive early to get your tickets as they are only offered in the gift store.
Tours of the Aged Jail Museum previous all around 30 minutes and are about divided into 3 parts: a movie, the key mobile block, and the dungeon. After the tour, guests can then explore the mobile block and some of the facet spots of the jail at their very own speed. All informed, most website visitors will commit around forty five minutes in this article when their tour stars.
The jail&rsquos movie is about ten minutes extensive and offers an overview of the record of the jail, and, in particular, the Molly Maguires.
The Molly Maguires have been a key society of Irish coal miners who were making an attempt to battle for far better and safer operating conditions. In 1877-1879, six of them have been hung in this jail on (incredibly most likely) trumped-up expenses.
The video, as nicely as a superior portion of the tour protect this appealing labor historical past from the area.
Even though the online video is extremely effectively completed, the Tv that it plays on is a little bit on the small side. The seem could also be enhanced, especially because the narrator speaks in a thick Irish accent. Though I don&rsquot assume she is inherently difficult to comprehend, the relatively minimal quantity combined with the accent implies that you have to pay out careful attention to realize everything in the video clip.
Hopefully, they will get a relatively larger Television and a far better audio process in the upcoming to increase the encounter in this part of the tour.
Once the movie is completed, guides just take you into the primary portion of the jail. This aspect of the tour contains each the most important ground of the cell block and the dungeon that&rsquos in the basement, with the specific get various depending on the other tours that are likely on at the time.
The dungeon is located in the basement immediately beneath the main cell block and is wherever prisoners were being housed in solitary confinement from the earliest days of the jail till the 1980s.
The spot is quite darkish, even though a few modest lights deliver a bit of illumination in the main home. Having your mobile cellular phone flashlight with you will enable you see into the true cells in this part of the museum.
Whilst down listed here, guides present a little bit of historical past about this location, and each how and why prisoners were held in this space. It certainly didn&rsquot sound like a enjoyment position to discover you.
The main cell block of the Previous Jail Museum is a two-tale room that functions additional than twenty cells.
In the centre of the house, a recreated gallows sits on the precise spot where 6 of the Molly Maguires have been hung in the 1870s. Guides supply a great deal of heritage about this region, both of those related to the Molly Maguires and to other stories from the record of the jail.
Even possessing visited several other historic jails close to PA (these kinds of as SCI Cresson and the Old Jail in Bradford County) I observed the stories in this article to be quite intriguing.
As soon as the guide is performed offering a bit of history, visitors are allowed to check out the cell block, as effectively as some of the other places of the jail.
Whilst I definitely loved on the lookout in the cells, some of which experienced home furniture to showcase what it would have been like to have been an inmate there, the most fascinating cell 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, despite this space getting painted about many occasions, his ghostly handprint remains.
Though this is probable practically nothing far more than a neighborhood legend, it&rsquos nonetheless an appealing tale, and the darkish location on the wall does surface to be a handprint.
Unfortunately, you can&rsquot enter the cell, which signifies that you can only perspective it from a couple of ft absent and from the facet. You also aren&rsquot authorized to choose photographs of it, but you can buy photos of it in the gift store or see a huge photo of it on screen at the nearby Mauch Chunk Museum (where by my image earlier mentioned will come from).
The other places of the museum that you can take a look at at your individual pace consist of the higher stages of the warden&rsquos property (which at the time of my go to contained only empty rooms), the visitation place, the prison kitchen, and the ladies&rsquos jail.
A Few of Notes about Checking out
There are two supplemental things I required to make take note of for traveling to.
Initially of all, other than a handful of handicapped parking spots in their great deal, there is no close by parking. When going to, you&rsquoll want to shell out to park in the lower portion of city close to the practice station and wander to the Aged Jail. It&rsquos about a 50 percent-mile walk from the educate station to the museum and is a bit uphill.
Also, inspite of getting handicapped parking, there is no quick obtain into the historic creating for people with mobility challenges. Nonetheless, if you can tackle a few steps, you can at least see the key part of the creating.