Hamilton County’s Tick Ridge schoolhouse has existed in one way or another since shortly after 1854, when free schools were established at Wayne Township’s Districts 1 and 2¹. The first structure was log, and it was replaced by a frame schoolhouse² that was eventually superseded by a brick building in 1892³.

The school’s unique name comes from its location, and several stories purport to tell the origin of the area later known as Tick Ridge. Unfortunately, the specifics have been lost to time: it seems as though someone -or some people- were attacked by a swarm of wood ticks either while bringing their cows home or while they were out hunting raccoons⁴.

Along with the District 8 school at Clarksville and the Willow Pond schoolhouse in District 1, Tick Ridge closed after 1929-30 school year in order to send its students to the township’s new, consolidated school at Durbin⁵. The building was sold at auction in 1940⁶.

The schoolhouse was demolished in 1975, but its bricks and cornerstone were incorporated into a home that was erected on the same site. The cornerstone can be seen at the right side of the image. As a Hoosier Homestead farm, the surrounding property has been owned by the same family for more than a century⁷, and it’s historic in its own right.

Sources Cited
1 Helm, T. B. (1880). History of Hamilton County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers). book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Neal, G. (1978, November 6). A Table Of Extraordinary Dimensions. The Noblesville Ledger. p. 4.
3 The Original Bricks (1982, August 23). The Noblesville Ledger. p. 1.
4 Guthrie, W. (1952, May 19). Hamilton Ridge Is Monument to a Pest. The Indianapolis news. p. 11.
5 Hamilton County Public Schools (1929). Teacher’s directory: names and addresses of officers and teachers of Hamilton County Public Schools, 1929-1930. Noblesville, IN.
6 Notice of Sale of Township Abandoned School Properties (1940, March 18). The Noblesville Ledger. p. 5.
7 Montgomery, G. (1990, September 24). Bean supper draws crowd to county’s ‘Tick Ridge’. The Noblesville Ledger. p. 1.