I said to myself "Damn!" when I saw this thread. I used to work in "the fort" and a friend came from Rome City. 95% of social life there seemed to revolve around bar hopping. A hop and a skip from Chain O' Lakes state park and Greater Kendalltucky.

 

This looks rather bleak - you can basically dismiss Northern Indiana in the winter. I don't even see dead people.

 

It is much more festive in the summer, and actually worth sticking around then. Well, at least in the cabin resort areas.

More personal trivia - Rome City used to be something more of a town. In the 1950s my brother and I used to attend 4-H camp every summer at nearby Limberlost Camp on Oliver Lake. The camp then was owned by Jack Wainwright, who had been band director at North Side High School in Fort Wayne when my mom and her sister attended there. He had been a personal friend of John Philip Sousa.

 

That area isn't even good farm land; all it has are woods and rocks and swamps and the lakes. It goes completely dormant in Winter, but things do liven up some during the Summer. Kendallville isn't so bad, especially when warm weather comes around. Several years ago it got hit with a tornado that tore away the 1960s cladding from some of the downtown buildings and showed younger residents what had been hiding from them. It spurred some interest in preservation/restoration, and there are some decent facades there, an actual surviving small-town cinema, and some galleries, restaurants and shops. One of Kendallville's long-time leading industries was the manufacturing of windmills and pumps, and there's an interesting museum with working windmills of various types not far from town.

 

Recently the Sylvan Lake Dam needed major repairs, and the lake level was lowered drastically for a couple of years while the work was being done. A number of the residents were upset by the inconvenience. It couldn't be helped; the dam had become a hazard.