The famous Indian football player of Carlisle School, considered by many to be the greatest all around athlete of all time. In 1950 the Associated Press poll named him the outstanding athlete for the first half of the twentieth century, with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey as second and third.
Jim Thorpe's grandmother was a granddaughter of the Sauk and Fox chief, Black Hawk. Jim, whose Indian name was Wathohuck (Bright Path), was born in a one room log cabin near Shawnee, Oklahoma, May 28, 1888. His twin brother died at the age of eight.
Jim Thorpe entered Carlisle in 1907, beginning his football career. In the 1912 Olympics, he set point totals in the decathlon and pentathlon which stood for twenty years.
Jim Thorpe died in Los Angeles, March 18, 1953, at the age of sixty four. A few years later the boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk in Pennsylvania, voted to unite under the name of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Thorpe's body was moved there in 1957 and a granite tomb dedicated to his memory.
Related Information within this Site
[ Carlisle Indian
School ]