After years of sitting empty, a local landmark is now ready to welcome guests and share a piece of Brown County history and folklore with those who visit.
The John Marcus Dickey house, which many locals know as "Flags of the Nations," is now a tourist home owned by Bear Wallow Farmhouse LLC.
Dickey built the home in 1905, surveying the land below on what Van Tassel said is the second-highest point in Brown County. Dickey was the biographer and secretary to famous Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley.
It was a part of the 550-acre Lilly-Dickey Woods, which Dickey donated to Indiana University in 1942. The home was leased for more than 50 years by Ken Tuxhorn’s nonprofit, Outdoor Educational Activities Incorporated, according to Jason Banach, director of IU’s properties.
In the 2010s, IU declared the house and surrounding five acres "surplus property," Banach said. Brown County’s Peaceful Valley Heritage preservation group had shown interest in the home, wanting its structure and history to be preserved and maintained. Several group members wanted to see it as a hub for hikers, bicyclists, tourists, literary groups and more.
The key was to find a purpose that’s sustainable which preserves and honors the house’s history, said PVH member Jim Schultz.
James Van Tassel and Bear Wallow Farmhouse LLC have a vision to do exactly that. The property was sold by IU to the Indiana Historical Society, from which Van Tassel purchased it in the fall of 2018.
Van Tassel, a partner in the venture, grew up on the north side of Indianapolis, but has had family connections to Brown County since the 1930s. A great-uncle of his bought a schoolhouse and moved it to a property in the northern part of Nashville in 1930 or 1931.
Van Tassel studied environmental science at IU and has been an operations supervisor with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management at Lake Lemon. He’s also been doing small construction jobs.
He said that with the home’s history and size, it made sense for it to be an Airbnb rental. The home, a historical landmark, never really "hit the market," Van Tassel said, and because of a friend’s connection with the Indiana Historical Society, they were able to purchase it.
<strong>House history</strong>
Beginning in 1949, Tuxhorn built a 20-mile trail from Morgan-Monroe State Forest to the house on Bear Wallow Hill, one of many paths that he would forge over the years. The Flags of the Nations trail was on the opposite side of the road from the home, where he’d also built an observation tower.
Tuxhorn sought the 112 flags from the countries directly and was answered by many of them, said his widow, Barbara Tuxhorn said in 2016. None of the flags were similar size, however, so he purchased all the flags needed out of his own pocket.
Tuxhorn believed that it was important for the Boy Scouts that camped at the home to be able to recognize symbols of all nations, be they friendly or not. Public outcry forced him to not fly the flags of communist countries, Barbara Tuxhorn said.
The house was a headquarters for the trail and home to the Tuxhorns and their children, Bruce and Jenny.
In the early years, there was running water, but it was cold and from a cistern. It took a year before they had a water heater, and the house wasn’t hooked into county water until the 1980s. The home was heated by small-wood burning stoves, then by small oil heaters in various rooms by the time Barbara moved out in 2013 and Marcus had passed away.
Barbara Tuxhorn said that most of the house was only used on the weekends, when hikers and campers arrived. The upstairs bedrooms would hold more than 30 Boy Scouts. A community room was open to Scouts and other hikers downstairs.
<strong>Bringing it back</strong>
Work began on the home in the spring of 2019 by local providers like Dunham Plumbing and Travis Wheeler’s electric. With delays in construction and delays due to the pandemic, they were able to open the home to renters in March 2021, once the county had approved their permits. Now, they’re fully up and running.
Though the house is "built like an ox," Van Tassel said that the amount of work they did was extensive, stripping it down virtually to the bare studs in the entire house.
They worked to install plumbing, septic and electric, drywalled the entire home and insulated the exterior walls. Van Tassel said that the home was "chopped up," with small rooms and a lot of doors and walls. They took many out, vaulted ceilings and opened up the space as much as they could. They also expanded the kitchen. Outside, they scraped and painted the exterior.
The spacious home has five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms and sleeps 10 guests.
"We thought it’d be a great idea to restore the house and the history of it," he said. "We’re going to try and do the best we can to keep it historical, keep it in Brown County, with local people doing repairs."
"Everyone kind of knows the house, and we’d like to give an homage to Marcus Dickey … really strive on the historical landmark aspect." Van Tassel said.
He said he’d like to hang Marie Goth and Frank Hohenberger prints on the walls, paying tribute to local artists who have influenced the history of Brown County.
Looking forward, Van Tassel said that he’d like to see the Boy Scouts back out there for a weekend, like Dickey had done. For now, he enjoys having it as his disposal and will entertain the idea of taking on more tourist homes in the future.
"Once this one’s going for a year or so, it would be fun to do one on a smaller scale," he said.
"It’s interesting to think about what (this area) looked like in the past," he said, sharing how Bear Wallow got its name. "Bears would go down and wallow in the springs; there is a spring to the left of the house, if you’re facing it. There’s a dip, but it’s a perfect example of a spring where bears would go and ‘wallow.’"
There are some public trails near the property that guests may enjoy while they stay. The boundaries of places they cannot go, including the IU-owned research land around it, were to be marked, according to the terms of the tourist home permit.
The flagpoles are no longer a part of the property. IU owns that land. Still, restoring them might be worth looking into in the future, Van Tassel said.
"A lot of people know it as the ‘Flags of the Nations’ house," he said. "It’d be cool to bring that back."
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="Bear Wallow Farmhouse" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Address: 3980 Bear Wallow Hill Road
Reservations: <a href="http://airbnb.com/rooms/47030940?source_impression_id=p3_1620930473_boQAtYYvyrtdKYQn&amp;guests=1&amp;adults=1">airbnb.com/rooms/47030940?source_impression_id=p3_1620930473_boQAtYYvyrtdKYQn&amp;guests=1&amp;adults=1</a>
[sc:pullout-text-end]