Read time: 4 min.

Whether it’s every historic courthouse in the state, all the old schoolhouses in my area, or the full lineup of Indiana’s Long Line towers, I’ve always been drawn to big, sweeping projects. There’s something irresistible about trying to see the whole picture! It looks like old county infirmaries are up next.

Infirmaries. County homes. Poor farms. Almshouses. The names varied, but the reality didn’t: every county in Indiana had one; a place set aside for those who had nowhere else to turn. Beginning around 1840, commissioners realized they needed to provide for the indigent, the elderly, and people suffering from physical disabilities or mental health issues. 

Many counties struggled to keep their poor farms afloat, and some began shutting their doors as early as the late 1930s and early 1940s. The arrival of Medicare and Medicaid ultimately sounded the death knell for most infirmaries, but a few managed to hang on far longer than expected. Remarkably, a handful of counties still operate their own today!

I always wondered about visiting all of Indiana’s county homes, but that idea came to a head Monday when a Facebook friend asked me if I had an exhaustive list of them. I didn’t, but said that, if he gave me a day or two, I could probably cook one up. I already knew the locations of maybe ten or twelve county homes offhand, but that turned out to be just thirteen percent of the whole picture! The rest had to be chased down the hard way, by leaning on social media groups, combing through old newspaper articles, and cross-referencing cemetery listings. 

A handful of stubborn, rural outliers refused to give themselves up until I pulled out plat maps and started digging in earnest. That said, every lead -no matter how promising- had to pass one final test: confirmation through historic aerial imagery that traced each site from the late 1940s right up to today.

I wound up finding them all after a flurry of sleepless research over the past couple of days. As a result, I now have a Google Map pinpointing the locations of every one of Indiana’s old county homes! This kind of living inventory didn’t exist before I started, at least as far as I’m aware. It’s my gift to you. Yes, you!

What surprised me most was just how many old county homes have endured: thirty-seven of them remain scattered across the state, often repurposed or forgotten. Going in, I would’ve guessed maybe twenty were still standing. I’m excited to get out in the field and find them all!

So far, I’ve only been to one, the former site of the Blackford County Home. By the looks of it, the closest to my house that still stand are in Centerville, Portland, and Winchester. The furthest are in LaPorte and Crawford Counties. I’ve still got about twenty old AT&T Long Line towers to visit, but I think I can start this project at the same time I finish that one up. 

Taken together, Indiana’s old county homes form a statewide network that once shouldered an enormous responsibility before slowly fading from public view. Some sit abandoned at the edge of town, some have been folded into new uses, and others still carry on their original mission. Each one represents a local attempt to answer an uncomfortable but necessary question: what do we owe the people who fall through the cracks?

All of that pulls me into this next project. Tracking them down on a map was only the first step.  As I finish up the Long Line towers and start adding county homes to my itinerary, I’m hoping to understand not just where these places were, but what they meant to the communities that built them. Like so many things I write about, they’ve been hiding in plain sight all along.