Tag Yorktown Indiana

Yorktown Middle School: A farewell to familiar grounds

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 9 min.

I’m in a lot of local history groups on social media. Some of the most poignant posts come from people who’ve made the bittersweet realization that all the schools they once attended have been demolished. If that’s all it takes to become a graybeard, I’m well on my way- at least sort of. In 2020, a big chunk of Yorktown Middle School was torn down. A new building occupies the site today.

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Three old truss bridges in and around Yorktown

Ted Shideler 8 Comments
Read time: 9 min.

The road less traveled is almost always worth venturing down, and here are some examples if you don’t believe me: although most everyone who’s driven through Yorktown over the past eighteen years is familiar with the steel truss bridge at Morrow’s Meadow, two more metal crossings -both older and more impressive- sit less than a mile off Highway 32 in Mt. Pleasant Township.

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Yorktown’s Skillen-Gooden artesian well

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 6 min.

My posts sometimes serve as distress flares I fire off to social media when I’m looking for more information about a topic. I recently shared one about two flowing wells near Yorktown, hoping someone would pipe up and tell me about one I’d heard existed near West Muncie and Gas Lake. Last week, someone did, even inviting me to come out and it in her backyard. Mission accomplished!

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Yorktown’s subterranean Teen Canteen

Ted Shideler 4 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

Yorktown’s home to a nice row of landmark, historic buildings on the north side of Smith Street between Broadway and Walnut. One of the most prominent is the IOOF Hall, built in 1914. Not many know it today, but the sidewalk along the north side of Smith Street once featured stairwells that led to businesses in the building’s basement. For a brief period around the Second World War, one of those tenants was the Yorktown Teen Canteen. Wouldn’t you have loved to have an underground bunker to hang out with your friends in? I would have!

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Mt. Pleasant Township’s old Center schoolhouse site

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 5 min.

I’ve probably driven past the First Freewill Baptist Church at the corner of Nebo and Cornbread roads east of Yorktown twelve thousand times. When I was a kid, my family always got calls for the pastor since he and my stepdad shared the same name! The building isn’t that interesting from an architectural standpoint, but I’m highlighting it here today because it sits on what was once the site of Mt. Pleasant Township’s District 7 schoolhouse. Locals knew it as the Center School.

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Mt. Pleasant Township’s Yorktown schoolhouse in Delaware County

Ted Shideler 8 Comments
Read time: 4 min.

John B. Brown taught the first school in Yorktown at a hewed-log structure built in 1842 that lasted until 18581. Its replacement was a two-room frame building erected on land set aside by town founder Oliver H. Smith. In 1880, a three-room brick schoolhouse that was two stories tall and three bays wide became Yorktown’s third.

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Mt. Pleasant Township’s Kilgore schoolhouse in Delaware County

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Read time: 2 min.

The Kilgore school was probably the first school in Mt. Pleasant Township1. It took its name from the man who taught its first classes, David Kilgore. He later achieved a reputation as a judge and an Indiana state representative and, eventually, Muncie’s part of the turnpike that connected it with Yorktown was named after him2.

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Mt. Pleasant Township’s Lincoln schoolhouse in Delaware County

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Read time: 3 min.

Going back to a time before school districts were officially laid out, a predecessor of Mount Pleasant Township’s District 3 schoolhouse was the Mt. Pleasant schoolhouse, built on land donated by James M. Van Matre in 18431. The deed to the plot of land Van Matre donated mentioned “School District 32,” but it was more than four miles south of District 3 when it was officially laid out in 1854. Later, the site of Van Matre’s school became home to the Mount Pleasant Church and cemetery.

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