Read time: 5 min.

High Dive Park is my favorite place in Elkhart. Swimming and diving are no longer allowed, but the place’s name hints at its captivating past. A mysterious brick tower, long closed off and covered up, sits at the heart of the park, and I spent years wondering about its secrets. Fortunately, new generations don’t have to. The tower was reopened to the public just a few days ago. 

High Dive Park sits behind Kroger just northeast of downtown Elkhart. The lake that acts as its focal point started as a gravel quarry¹. In 1939, a colorful local realtor named Charles Fieldhouse purchased the place and transformed it into a pleasure park².

Fieldhouse eventually added amenities and amusements like the high dive, bleachers, and a toboggan slide. High Dive Park was born, and admission cost a quarter. After he returned from a trip to the Netherlands, Fieldhouse added a forty-five-foot windmill to the park³. The tower I was fascinated with is what remains of it.

An elderly Charlie Fieldhouse sold the property to the city of Elkhart in 1958. Over the years, most of the risky attractions were removed as officials re-established High Dive as a municipal park. In 1977, it received an upgrade that added several new amenities and led the aging windmill to take on its present appearance⁴. Unfortunately, people did what people tend to do under a lack of close supervision. It wasn’t long before the observation tower was closed entirely. 

I had no idea about the park’s hidden stories when Dad took me fishing there. The bizarre, conical tower capped by an open observation deck rounded into view as we lugged our gear down to Christiana Creek. Dad didn’t grow up in town and wasn’t aware of the park’s history, which just added to the mystery. Years after he died, I was back in town and felt compelled to visit the intriguing remains of that old windmill tower.

Returning to High Dive Park after I knew its history was a bittersweet reminder of what once was. I mourned my Dad, of course, but felt sorry for the park. Once bustling with life, it lay eerily quiet as I wandered around taking photos. I wrote about the place once I got home. Eventually, it became one of my most popular posts of 2023. 

Today, High Dive Park- What’s in a Name? is still one of my best-read posts.  Several people from Elkhart discovered it, including a WVPE reporter and a member of the Elkhart Parks & Recreation Board. The board member personally invited me to attend the tower’s rededication ceremony last Saturday, and I decided to go.

I arrived at the park about twenty minutes before the tower dedication and was immediately blown away. High Dive was bustling with life! It turned out to be Free Fishing Day in Indiana, and I had unknowingly stepped into a children’s fishing clinic. At least 250 people were gathered at the park. It was an incredible scene.

I marched down to the tower where a small group mingled. I’d expected thirty or forty people for the ceremony, but the crowd swelled to nearly a hundred by the appointed time! The ceremony began with a trio of heartfelt speeches from Elkhart’s parks superintendent, the board member who invited me, and Mayor Rod Roberson. Finally, a ribbon was cut and the door to the tower was opened to the public for the first time in probably twenty years

The moment marked a poignant day of rediscovery and community for the people of Elkhart. I joined the line, eager to climb the spiral staircase to the tower’s apex. I was standing there when I realized something that sounds stupid in hindsight: despite how much I’d thought about it over the years, High Dive Park’s iconic tower never belonged to me alone.

It didn’t feel right for a carpetbagger from Muncie to take away precious moments from the kids enchanted by its bird’s eye view or the elderly visitors who remembered the park’s glory days, so I left. Only a handful of people were allowed up at a time, too, so that helped me make my decision. All told, I was content to have been part of such a moment of connection, nostalgia, and history. 

Fortunately, I can return to explore the tower and its breathtaking view later this summer. To prevent the chicanery that once plagued it, Elkhart has vowed to open the tower for chaperoned guided tours on select Sundays until Labor Day. One of these weekends, I’ll be back. When I go, I’ll share the stunning vista from the peak of one of Elkhart’s long-standing landmarks! A piece of High Dive Park’s history has been reborn, and I couldn’t be happier.

Sources Cited
1 Hixson, W.W. (1920s) Plat book of Elkhart County, Indiana. W.W. Hixson & Company [Rockford]. Web. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
2 High Dive Park, Construction of Island (1940s). Island on H.D. Park — Fieldhouse bought this land — was a quarry (gravel) hired a man — paid him $5,000 to make this island ca. 1940-41.; High Dive Park. Web. Retrieved December 22, 2022.
3 Fieldhouse, C. (1957). For Lands Sake — 73 years in Real Estate. book. Service Press. Elkhart, Indiana.
4 Elkhart Park Tower (1977, December 18). The South Bend Tribune. p. 8.