Trade Card For The Switch-Back Bazaar & Curiosity Emporium, Mauch Chunck, Pennsylvania

MANSION HOUSE

Publication: Privately printed for the Mansion House, Mauch Chunk, 1880, N P, i880

3.35" x 5.5" trade card on white cardstock, printed in black on both sides. This uncommon card advertises a curio shop located in the Mansion House Hotel in the Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. Later renamed Jim Thorpe, Mauch Chunk was a popular tourist destination offering beautiful mountain scenery, waterfalls, and an eight-mile switchback railway. The Mansion House stretched for 355 feet along the riverfront, and by the 1870s boasted five stories and accommodations for 400 guests. According to this card, the Switch-Back Bazaar and Curiosity Emporium offered local guidebooks photographs, and souvenirs, and as well as "Indian, Swiss, English, French, Japanese, and Other Curiosities and Fancy Goods" -- including baskets, fans, jewelry, canes, taxidermied birds and squirrels, gemstones, fossils, and more. The verso of the card provides tourists with a list of places to visit and table of distances and is illustrated with an image of "Jim," who appears to be the switch-back railroad conductor. Minor soiling, penciled date (8-16-1880); very good.

Inventory Number: 49309