History & local legend
Jost Folhaber was a traveling peddler whose murder became one of the best-known stories of Locust Mountain near Mahanoy City. The local history says he met his attacker at Reich’s tavern in 1797. Hearing money in Folhaber’s saddlebags, the man followed him into the woods and killed him for it.
Folhaber was buried near the place of the attack. Over generations, visitors left coins among the stones, a gesture park educator Robin Tracey described when discussing the site. Mia Light remembered walking there as a child and finding the isolated grave seemingly cared for.
Folklore gave the peddler a return journey. In one version collected in Pennsylvania Fireside Tales, he rises from the grave on horseback once a year, looks around, cries out and falls again.
Sources
- Donald R. Serfass, Times News, 2012, interviews with Mia Light and Tuscarora State Park educator Robin Tracey
- Jeffrey R. Frazier, Pennsylvania Fireside Tales, volume VI, the rider and the three-cent legend
- Mahanoy Area Historical Society, Folhaber and Bailey meet at Reich’s tavern
- Mahanoy Township zoning map labels Peddler’s Grave
