Read time: 7 min.

Every now and then, I stumble across a building that refuses to reveal its story. For a long time, the gym that remained from the old Cadiz School in Henry County, Indiana, was one of them. I wanted to learn more about it, so I dug through newspapers, plat maps, and public records. I reached out to local historians and even emailed the building’s current owners! Still, it took the commenters on a random social media post by a Henry County historical group to finally answer the questions I had.

The tiny town of Cadiz, Indiana (pronounced hereabouts as CAD-iss), sits in Henry County’s Harrison Township on State Road 38. It was home to 163 people in 2020. Platted 184 years earlier, it got its name from Cadiz, Ohio, from whence its founders hailed¹. A post office was established in 1837 and lasted until 1923². 

An 1857 plat map of Henry County shows a handful of schoolhouses in Harrison Township, including one in Cadiz at the present-day corner of County Road 525-West and State Road 38³. A home with an impressive gazebo sits there today, but the site of the more recent Cadiz High School -built in 1901 according to a commemorative boulder- is about a fifth of a mile southeast on State Road 38. 

Old plat maps of Henry County don’t give out much information about its schoolhouses, but I know that Harrison Township was home to at least five including the one in Cadiz⁴. The historical trail gets murky and thin from there, but township officials approved a $23,430 addition to the building in 1922 that included an assembly room, three classrooms, a library, an office, and a gymnasium⁵. An older gym on the second story of the 1901 school was converted into a pair of classrooms⁶, and I’d bet my left Croc that the expansion marked the end of Harrison Township’s scattered one-room schools.

The new gym may have been adequate for the time, but it only sat 200 people and measured a scant 40 by 60 feet beneath a seventeen-foot ceiling. Fortunately, the tiny space didn’t get in the way of the Cadiz Spaniards. They christened their new home by vanquishing rival Markleville in November 1928⁷! As Indiana basketball evolved, however, Cadiz’s court became hopelessly undersized. Today’s IHSAA standard basketball pitch, as my old Italian bosses used to say, measure 84 by 50 feet- an area of 4,200 square feet. They’re 75% larger than what was found in Cadiz.

Cadiz finally received a replacement in 1958, and that’s the gym that still stands today. Local newspapers described the detached structure as one of the finest gyms in Indiana for a town of Cadiz’s size⁸! Unfortunately, the visiting Wilkinson Bulldogs ruined opening night when they narrowly defeated the Spaniards by a score of 47-42⁹.

As it turned out, the new gym in Cadiz only enjoyed a brief life as part of the IHSAA tournament. In 1967, the school consolidated with Middletown and Sulphur Springs to form the Northwestern School Corporation¹⁰. The following year, the district announced plans to demolish the old high school building¹¹. Historic aerial photographs confirm that it disappeared around that time.

Unfortunately that’s where the trail got confusing. The 1958 gymnasium survived, but newspapers suggest elementary classrooms remained on the property long after the original high school was demolished. As a matter of fact, grade-school basketball games continued at the gym into the 1970s and beyond¹²! Nothing I found explained exactly what remained as an elementary school or how the complex devolved into what stands today.

Today, all that appears apparent of the old Cadiz High School is the 1958 gym, which -if the repository of cars along its southeastern side is any indication- may now serve as storage as much as anything else. Hoping to learn more, I emailed the property’s owner, who read my message but never replied. I’d have loved a chance to go inside, but I mostly wanted an answer to the mystery that still nagged at me: did the gym once feature classrooms? Were they used after the high school was torn down?

Fortunately, I eventually learned that it did. A few weeks back, the Henry County Historical Society posted an image of the gym that immediately caught my attention on its Facebook page. I asked about the building’s later status and a few former students chimed in to say that classrooms for first though fourth grades were along a hall south of the gym proper, while a kindergarten classroom was in the northwestern corner of the gym. That was enough to solve my personal mystery!

Sometimes it sucks to find places like the Cadiz gym so long after they’ve been shuttered, but there’s a continuum of knowledge at play. Just like what the former students knew, my contemporary research will be there for people years into the future, I hope. Now it’s your turn to contribute: were you a student at Cadiz? Did a parent or grandparent attend school there? Do you have photogs, yearbooks, or memories of the building before the demolition? Are you a master of Vintage Aerials? Let me know! As always, I’d love to learn more.

Sources Cited
1 Hazzard, G. (1906). Hazzard’s History of Henry County Indiana, Volume II. 3 George  Hazzard [New Castle]. Book.
2 “Henry County”. Jim Forte Postal History. Web. Retrieved June 21, 2026.
3 Map of Henry County, Indiana (1857). Harwood & Watson [New Castle]. Map. 
4 Map of Henry County, Indiana, 1897 (1897). Steele, Oliver C. Map. 
5 Gets School Contract (1922, April 28). The Knightstown Banner. P. 6. 
6 Cadiz Schools Open September 25th (1922, September 22). The Knightstown Banner. P. 3. 
7 Cadiz Spaniards Down Arabians (1928, November 16). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 11. 
8 Wilkinson Spoils Opener in New Gym for Cadiz (1958, November 6).  The Knightstown Banner. p. 17. 
9 (See footnote 8). 
10 Alumni of former Middletown H.S. plan reunion Aug. 1 (1976, July 29). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10. 
11 Board Gets Five Bids For Cadiz Demolition (1968, September 21). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 14. 
12 Club to play benefit game (1972, February 26). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 10. 
13 Radford, D. (1982, July 8). School Board to Keep Cadiz Elementary Open (1982, July 8). The Muncie Star. p. 2. 
14 Radford, D. (1983, March 1). Northwestern Board to Close Two Schools. The Muncie Star. p. 2. 
15 Rendfeld, R. (1986, August 6). Northwestern adds 3 options to school construction plans. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 7. 
16 Riggs, M. Henry County Historical Society (2026, August 12). Ist-4th grade were in the hall south of the gym. Kindergarten was off the NW corner of the gym. [Comment]. Facebook.