This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In 1983, the Jain monk Acharya Sushil Kumarji founded Siddhachalam on a rural site in Blairstown, New Jersey, sanctifying the land through spiritual practice and establishing it as a tirtha, a pilgrimage place. American Jains describe it as the first Jain tirtha outside India and the only Jain monastery outside the country.
The new tirtha did not take sides in Jainism's older internal divide. Its main temple deliberately holds images from both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions together and observes the auspicious days of both, so the community founded at Siddhachalam avoided carrying the sectarian split of India's two major Jain branches to its new home.
In 2012, Siddhachalam added a full replication of Shikharji, Jainism's most important pilgrimage destination, so that Jains living in North America could visit a version of a site that would otherwise require travel to India.
What Acharya Sushil Kumarji's 1983 founding changed for Jainism's spread outside India was creating the tradition's first tirtha beyond its homeland, one built from the start to hold both of Jainism's major branches together rather than choosing between them, and later extended to bring Shikharji itself within reach of Jains in North America.