Jack Sterling’s great-great-grandfather worked as a sexton at the Upper Mauch Chunk Cemetery in Jim Thorpe.

Sterling’s ancestor is buried in that same cemetery, along with Sterling’s grandparents, parents and late wife. One day, Sterling said, he too will be laid to rest in those same grounds.

He is one of the few people who has a space in the nondenominational Jim Thorpe cemetery, which reached capacity decades ago.

The Upper Mauch Chunk Cemetery was founded in the early 1800s and owned by a mining company called Lehigh Coal and Navigation, but in 1847, the company handed over ownership of the cemetery to the townspeople.

At least 6,000 people have been buried in the cemetery. But there are thought to be hundreds — if not thousands — more who were buried there before records started being kept, Sterling, president of the Mauch Chunk Cemetery Association, said.

Despite its extensive history, the cemetery faces an uncertain fate. Lacking space and running on limited funds, without undergoing some sort of expansion, it’s at risk of one day shutting its doors for good. And it’s not the only local cemetery at a crossroads. Just this year, volunteers from the Tamaqua Odd Fellows Cemetery announced that the 155-year-old burial ground was struggling due to lack of resources and manpower.

“We cannot keep fighting a losing battle,” Justin C. Bailey, secretary of the Harmony Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, wrote in an appeal to the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership last January.

But Sterling is hoping the Jim Thorpe cemetery may have found a way to ensure its future.

“It’s a tough job,” he said. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

Just behind the cemetery’s main gate on Walnut Avenue stands an aged, brick chapel with a scarlet red door. Inside, there are six stained glass windows, a pulpit and an elevator shaft once used to lower bodies to the basement below. The building is known as the Memorial Chapel of Resurrection; its construction was funded by Mary Packer Cummings, the second daughter of Mauch Chunk businessman Asa Packer.

The Mauch Chunk Cemetery Association is drawing up plans to set up a columbarium (a place to store urns) within the chapel, equip with more than 100 notches. Sterling noted the association has yet to determine how much each niche will cost, but hopes to make them available for purchase as early as the end of this year.

In preparation for the structure’s installation, the chapel has undergone some renovations, including an upgrade to automatic lighting and an electronic door lock.

“It’s been well maintained,” Sterling said of the chapel. “But by putting it to use, it will be even better maintained.”

An expert on Jim Thorpe history, Sterling also set up a website laying out the Mauch Chunk Cemetery’s history. He keeps a log of every known burial that has taken place there since its inception, including their age and relatives.

“Everybody’s got a story,” Sterling said.

When asked why he thinks it’s important to preserve the cemetery’s history, Sterling references a quote summarized on his website.

“It is said every person has three deaths,” the first sentence on the page reads. “The first is the actual physical death, when the spirit leaves the body. The (second) death is when the body is lowered into the grave, never again to be seen in the flesh. The (third) and final death comes much later, when all who knew that person have joined him in the afterlife, and the name, even existence of that person vanishes from knowledge.”

“By preserving the history up here, it kind of pays tribute to the people that came before,” Sterling said. “We wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t have what we have if not for them.”