Read time: 5 min.

I’ve been to Terre Haute maybe five times in my life, most recently to take photos of a Long Line tower and snarf down a wet plate at Taco Casita. Still, I recently got a chance to do some virtual globetrotting there when my friend Brett reached out with a question about a mysterious old school. Here’s what we discovered.

I mention my buddy Brett from time to time. He’s the crazed maniac behind Hoosier Gym Journey, a quest to visit all 400+ current high school gyms in Indiana, along with those that remain from bygone eras. The other day, he hit me up with a quandary. 

“Otter Creek High School in Terre Haute is my current conundrum,” Brett wrote. “I think it was/is located at 1201 South 13th Street, but I’m not able to confirm. There’s also an Otter Creek Middle School in Terre Haute somewhere else, so I’m confused.” 

Otter Creek sounded like the name of a township to me, and sure enough, it was. From there, I assumed the old Otter Creek High School must have been the township’s consolidated school. The theory made sense, except for one glaring problem: the 13th Street site Brett had tracked down in Terre Haute wasn’t anywhere near Otter Creek Township!

Still, Brett’s reasoning was solid. The clue that led him to 13th Street was an obituary that suggested the deceased had helped transform what appeared to be the old Otter Creek School into what the building is today- the Lighthouse.

I hadn’t seen the obituary when I started my research, but I decided to learn about the current Otter Creek School. Its first portion, a fourteen-room elementary that cost $328,000, was dedicated in 1957¹. Crucially, the Otter Creek High School band furnished music at the ceremony². Three years later, township officials announced plans to build a new high school on U.S. 41 in North Terre Haute³. As the building neared completion in 1962, it was designated as a junior high⁴. That’s all well and good, but it begs the question: if it wasn’t the high school, where was the older building hiding?

A few minutes later, I finally found myself on the right track. A 1956 article in the Terre Haute Tribune noted that the planned Otter Creek Elementary would face U.S. 41 on a twenty-seven-acre site, just two blocks south of the existing school on Park Street⁵. That sounded promising, so I pulled up Google Maps, located Park Street’s intersection with U.S. 41 just south of downtown, and found nothing. There was no school. Also, there wasn’t any obvious trace of one.

Terre Haute also has a Park Avenue, though, so I tried that instead. Bingo! There was Otter Creek Elementary and Middle School, connected and facing a slightly angled roadway that looked every bit like an old alignment of U.S. 41. I still didn’t spot anything resembling a school two blocks to the north, but a little farther east, I noticed something unmistakable: an old gymnasium.

I went to Historic Aerials to find the old high school building. It was a substantial structure that sat just north of the gym. I wasn’t able to figure out when it was built since Terre Haute newspaper archives don’t go back that far, but I bet it was sometime around 1915. Aerials show the school was demolished before 1972.

The gym itself went up in 1928⁶. Over the years, the county assessor showed it housing a rotating cast of occupants that included Wabash Valley Crusaders for Christ and the Light House Mission- the same organization Brett had traced to the South 13th Street address, which was actually once Terre Haute’s Washington Elementary School⁷.

Regardless, we found what remains of the old Otter Creek High Scool. It’s always fun helping Brett research these old gyms. More than that, though, it’s satisfying to watch a handful of scattered clues snap into place. A misnamed street, a confusing obituary, and an orphaned gym tucked between houses: none of it meant much on its own. It’s a reminder that Indiana’s past isn’t gone. Rather, it’s just waiting for people like Brett, me, and probably you to slow down, ask the right questions, and notice what’s still standing.

Sources Cited
 1 New School Set At Otter Creek (1957, September 27). The Terre Haute Tribune. p. 2. 
2 (See footnote 1). 
3 School Site Purchase Appraiser Requested. The Terre Haute Star. p. 3. 
4 New Otter Creek School Designated Junior High by Vigo Trustee Board. The Terre Haute Star. p. 1. 
5 Otter Creek Plans School (1956, February 17). The Terre Haute Tribune. p. 13. 
6 Parcel 84-02-36-302-008.000-013 (2025). Office of the Assessor. Vigo County [Terre Haute]. Web. Retrieved January 21, 2026.
7 Vigo County School Corp. Changes School Districts. The Terre Haute Tribune. p. 32.