I love basketball and probably always will. Here in Indiana, it’s the perfect time to be a fan: the Fever just drafted Iowa phenom Caitlin Clark, and the Pacers just destroyed the Knicks in game four of the second round of the playoffs! Those are exciting developments, but what I like most about basketball is the history behind my state’s zealous participation in it. A trip to Richmond yesterday led me past three old high school gymnasiums just oozing with stories.

Madison County’s Boone and Duck Creek Townships operated independent systems of rural schoolhouses until 1949, when officials joined forces to build a $150,000 grade school with six classrooms, a gymnasium/auditorium, and a cafeteria¹. The building opened two years later, bringing an end to a hundred-year tradition of one-room schools.

In 1881, In 1881, Greene Township’s District 6 schoolhouse stood on land owned by Jonas Siders just west of Portland near the Salamonie River¹. Sometime before 1887, a replacement was built at the southwest corner of Division Road and County Road 125-South². The school sat across the road from a Methodist Episcopal church and took the name Willow Chapel.

I’ve been intrigued by flowing wells for most of my adult life. An hour or two after I posted about three I found in Chesterfield’s RV campground, someone with the Rangeline Nature Preserve got in touch to tell me about another one nearby. Partially submerged, the Rangeline flowing well sits in the middle of a lagoon!

In 1833, a farmer named Peace Maker purchased a piece of land in the rural area of Noblesville Township miles away from any nearby settlement. He built a schoolhouse, initially called Kirkindoll¹, sometime before 1866². Today, an 1896 version of that school, later known as Hazel Dell, sits just southwest of the original site near a Dairy Queen, Meijer, and CVS.

Some of the earliest teachers in Blackford County’s Washington Township were Edward Hughes, William McKee, Edmund Lockett, William A. Bonham, and Thomas Lillibridge¹. By the turn of the twentieth century, the township’s schoolhouses were open 125 days of the year. Several remain standing today, but the most imposing reminder of the Washington Township’s scholastic history is an old gymnasium in the hamlet of Roll. 

Some of Muncie’s most cherished parks honor the people who provided their land. Heekin Park commemorates James Heekin¹, McCulloch Park pays tribute to George McCulloch², and Westside Park was named after Aldo Q. Westside (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). Hidden a block south of Muncie’s main commercial strip, Jack’s Park follows the same routine. I always wondered who Jack was. Why does he have a park? 

Home to sixty-six people per square mile, Madison County’s Jackson Township is rural. Its population is only a third of Indiana’s average! Nevertheless, the place was home to ten schoolhouses in 1874¹. The total dwindled until the eight-classroom Jackson Township Consolidated School was completed in 1955.

In 1839, Thomas Jefferson Davis purchased 320 acres of land at the corner of County Road 100-South and County Road 500-West in Madison County to build a house. One of his sons, Doctor Ball Davis, built a larger home around the original cabin in 1877. At some point, a one-room, brick schoolhouse was built on the southeastern corner of the intersection, just west of a tile factory that D.B. Davis erected and operated¹.