Muhammad Ali's Deer Lake Training Camp

Up Sculps Hill in the Schuylkill County mountains, Muhammad Ali built the training sanctuary he called Fighter's Heaven. After using a nearby mink farm for early workouts, Ali purchased this remote land in nineteen seventy-two and constructed a cluster of log cabins named for the great boxers who inspired him. He trained here into the early nineteen eighties, preparing for some of the most watched bouts in sports history.

The Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in nineteen seventy-four, where he reclaimed the heavyweight title from George Foreman with his Rope-a-Dope strategy, was plotted and rehearsed in these woods. A year later the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier followed. For nearly a decade these Pennsylvania hills were the proving ground of the greatest boxer of the twentieth century.