To frequent visitors, the stone walls, timber shelters, towers and overlooks of Brown County State Park may just seem like part of the scenery.
To a group of local and state preservationists, the park is a treasure trove of historic landmarks. After several years of work, it is receiving that attention.
All of Brown County State Park was accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places last month. The park also was added to the Indiana Register of Historic Sites and Structures in October.
The national listing is the culmination of at least four years of research and documentation by Indiana Landmarks staff and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, with support from local group Peaceful Valley Heritage.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“We’re very excited about this,” said Mark Dollase, vice president of preservation services with Indiana Historic Landmarks.
“Hopefully, that is something that the park and the community can play up as something that people will want to come visit for one additional reason beyond the beautiful foliage in the fall or the recreational activities that the park offers, but then also the historic aspects of the park as well.”
Indiana Landmarks staff identified 69 features they believed would contribute to the park’s significance, from horse trails that used to be county roads, to the iconic vistas, to structures built by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s and ’40s in the “park rustic” style. In total, 152 park features are highlighted in the nomination.
Some of the park “builders” credited include the CCC crews; Richard Lieber, director of the Indiana State Department of Conservation between 1919 and 1932; and Henry Wolfe, whose name is on the double-lane covered bridge at the park’s north gate. That bridge, built in 1838, has been on the National Register by itself since 1993.
Brown County State Park now has the distinction of being the largest historic district in the state of Indiana, Dollase said. The next-closest in size to it is the Indianapolis park and boulevard system and it’s only about a fifht the park’s size, he said.
The state park’s cultural scope also is enormous.
“When we looked at it, it encompassed so more than just the structures and the immediate history and early development of parks in Indiana, so going back to Lieber and other individuals like that, but it also looked at the development of art history in Brown County and the artists that came to Brown County to paint the natural environment that the park encompasses,” Dollase said. “It encompassed the early tourism industry, people who started to come to Brown County as early as the 1920s down what is now State Road 135.
“So, it was a really interesting nomination because it looked at so many different angles of Brown County,” Dollase said. “I know that I really enjoyed doing it as well as my staff.”
Brown County State Park is not the state’s oldest park, but it is its largest, at 15,815 acres, and one of its most visited, at about 1.5 million visits annually.
It was established in 1924 as the Brown County State Game Preserve by the efforts of Lee Bright, a frequent visitor to Brown County, and Lieber, often referred to as the father of Indiana state parks. Though it wasn’t intended as a park at that time, “its picturesque qualities were an attraction to the general public, and portions of its acreage came to be used informally as a park — especially the ridgetop known as ‘Weed Patch Hill,’ with its sweeping views and iconic fire tower,” a draft of the National Register nomination said.
The Abe Martin Lodge, a large swimming pool and cabins were built in the early 1930s to serve campers. Between 1932 and 1933, park attendance ballooned from 6,836 to 44,056.
This was the Great Depression, and the park fed many needs.
“While many institutions suffered in the face of the grim economy, the simple pleasures of enjoying the outdoors prevailed — not only because they were relatively affordable but also because the newly unemployed and underemployed masses found themselves with unprecedented amounts of free time,” the nomination says.
Through the CCC program, unemployed men were put to work by the federal government in the park, building trails, lakes, shelters and other structures, and planting more than 1 million trees to replace the forests that had been wiped out by aggressive harvesting of old-growth timber in the later part of the 19th century.
“The park, overall, remains one of the best examples in Indiana of interwar and New Deal-era land manipulation for recreational purposes,” the nomination says.
The CCC’s connection to the park was important beyond the physical work as well, said Jim Eagleman a retired Brown County State Park naturalist.
“We know of the benefits of providing work and a paycheck to the young men at that difficult time,” he wrote in an email last week. “Little did they know their work, generally, was so important to a struggling nation! All they wanted was a job!”
Creating park vistas was an important tool in capturing visitors’ attention. The surprising, sweeping views were part of what inspired Lieber to push for the park’s creation in the first place, the nomination document says.
“Today, most visitors to BCSP believe they are experiencing a pristine, conserved natural environment,” the nomination says. “However, the obverse is true. Except for the lay of the unglaciated land, nearly every sensory experience of one’s visit has been shaped by the hand of man. In some cases, the intervention is a simple as allowing selected deciduous trees to grow unhindered. In other places, lakes were created, vistas enhanced, hundreds of acres of pine trees were planted, trails were blazed, and roads were built.”
The popularity of the park and its focus on land conservation also had a major hand in the growth of Brown County’s art colony and in establishing the county’s tourism-based economy, the report says. Today, they are still closely connected.
“Although many of BCSP’s lodgings and other comforts for visitors were established between the late 1920s and the mid-1930s, these projects were in fact a response to earlier trends in tourism spurred by the publicity that resident-artists had garnered for Brown County,” the report says. “Thus, one scholar notes that, “(attracted) by the community of artists and the chance to escape the city, many newcomers bought cabins or built summer homes. Shops and accommodations sprang up, and Brown County developed a new industry, tourism,’” the report says, quoting a book by Lyn Letsinger-Miller.
“In this way,” the nomination says, “the artists who had begun to populate Brown County during the first two decades of the 20th century were responsible for the magnitude and nature of the county’s subsequent economic growth and concomitant physical development — including improvements to the built environment of Brown County State Park.”
After the CCC camps in the park closed in 1942, the state park also briefly became a training ground and barracks for soldiers to be deployed in World War II before Camp Atterbury was completed, the document says. “All military efforts at the park were carried out in such a manner as ‘would not permanently destroy or disfigure any features of the park,’” it reads.
Much of the research into the park’s history, landscape and architecture was carried out by Indiana Landmarks Community Preservation Specialist Sam Burgess, with assistance from park staff; former staff such as Eagleman, who wrote a dissertation on the park’s timber decades ago; and volunteers from Peaceful Valley Heritage.
Property Manger Doug Baird, who’s worked at the park for more than 40 years, said he wasn’t directly involved in the nomination process, but he answered a lot of questions from Burgess about buildings’ ages, original purposes and changes over time.
Eagleman said he often heard comments from visitors at programs on the CCC-era structures about “Will they ever be restored?” — “the buildings, bridges, stairways, shelters, trailside ovens, roads and fountains, all of which showed neglect and damage over time.”
Park staff have worked over the years to keep those historic structures sound, “all from a park budget that rarely provided additional funds from the DNR,” Eagleman said, giving credit to Baird for making them priorities.
Dollase said the primary purpose in trying to get the park on the National Register was to recognize its significance, but that recognition also could open doors to grants and other funding that may not have been available before.
In general, it’s a great talking tool when seeking dollars for support and maintenance, he added. A National Register designation says, “these are places to cherish among our state’s history and heritage.”
“It took several years to get here, but this is an important recognition for the park, its history and local heritage,” said Ruth Reichmann of Peaceful Valley Heritage.
“The placement secures that the buildings, stonework, landscaping will be protected,” added Jim Schultz of PVH. “This would have never happened without the help of Mark Dollase and Sam Burgess. Peaceful Valley Heritage has been associated with this effort for over four years and patience has paid off.”
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The entire 141-page nomination document for Brown County State Park to the National Register of Historic Places is posted at in.gov/dnr/historic/files/hp-browncountystatepark.pdf.
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