In September 2002 I set out on a road trip. My plan was to fairly-well cover the southern half of Indiana, but there's so much more to see than I anticipated that I barely saw the southwestern quadrant; even then, I skipped several places I would have liked to have visited.

 

Approaching Paoli's courthouse from the south. The bridge was built in 1880 by the Cleveland Iron & Bridge Company, of Cleveland Ohio. Paoli's population in the 2000 census was 3,844. The town is the seat of Orange County, and the elegant Greek Revival courthouse, second oldest still serving in Indiana, was built 1847 - 1850 at a cost of $14,000. A monument on the courthouse square commemorates the Federal Land Survey of 1787, whose Initial Point at the intersection of Indiana's Base Line and 2nd Prinicipal Meridian, about two miles south of town.

 

Paoli was the northernmost town captured during the Civil War by Confederate raiders led by Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan.

 

 

 

Patoka Lake is a property of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The property is comprised of 25,800 acres including an 8,800 acre lake.

 

 

My cousin and her husband raise Arabian horses on a farm just outside Paoli.

 

Corydon, capital of Indiana Territory from 1813 - 1815, became state capital in 1816 when Indiana gained statehood. The capital was moved to Indianapolis in 1825. Corydon was the home of the late Governor Frank O'Bannon.

 

 

 

 

 

William Hendricks, a native of Pennsylvania, was the first congressional representative of the new state of Indiana, and served as Governor 1822 - 1825. The capital was moved from Corydon to Indianapolis during his administration. His home and headquarters are open to the public as a historic site.

 

St. Meinrad Archabbey, founded by Swiss Benedictine monks in 1854, is a community of 120 monks. The grounds and buildings are open to the public, and various public programs and retreats are hosted.

 

A National Park Service Property, the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, preserves the site where Abraham Lincoln lived from ages 14 to 21 (1816 - 1830). Lincoln's father moved the family to Indiana from Kentucky because Indiana's system of maintaining property records better protected small landowners from fraud and encroachment. The recreation of the Thomas Lincoln farmstead is staffed by historic interpreters during summer tourism season.

 

Note the rain gutters and downspouts fashioned from split and hollowed-out saplings, that collected roof runoff in rain barrels. Wood ashes were saved in the V=shaped wooden hopper, and rainwater was poured through them to leach out the alkali (potash) that was used along with tallow from butchering to make soap.

 

Note the dearth of windows. Considering that almost everything you see here was fashioned by the farmer and his family from materials at hand, not much time was spent indoors during daylight. Window glass was frighteningly expensive then; it had to come from Cincinnati by wagon, and even a single small pane cost more than a day's wages for a laborer, let alone for a small farmer for whom mere survival was a full-time job, and a tenuous one at that.

 

 

 

 

Mary Help of Christians (1857) is one of several mid-nineteenth century church buildings still actively serving parishes in the Newburgh Deanery of the Evansville Diocese.

 

Indiana Geodes

 

Next up: New Harmony, Vincennes and Mansfield Roller Mill

Great stuff!!

 

The first capital building reminds me of Ohio's old capital building Chilicothe.

^I was just thinking that...

This area is really familiar to me.  Much of this is a daytrip from Louisville, which happened quite a bit with my family. 

 

Our next door neighbor was an avid fisherman and he used to fish Patoka Lake quite a bit, maybe even having a cabin there.  We didn't go too much, though.   

 

Corydon is or was a neat town, set in a valley. There was this wide creek flowing through downtown and it had this odd "ford" type of bridge over it, just a concrete deck right close to the water (if I remember right).  Though Ive been to Corydon a number of times I never saw the inside of that old capitol.

 

St Meinrad was neat, too.  There used to be a japanese meditation garden around the apse of the church, and there is nearby Ferdinand which has a big neo-italian abbey on a hill overlooking the town, very pictueseque.  This is getting into a German farming area thats a bit similar to the one around Minster and Maria Stein up in Mercer & Auglaize counties in Ohio.  The county seat here, Jasper, has an oktoberfest, I think.

 

Paoli was someplace more on the way to French Lick. It was a destination in Louisville for Paoli Peaks ski area.  I recall driving by that courthouse, but didn't know about that bridge.  The towns' unusual name come from a Corsican freedom fighter or guerilla (sort of like Ypsilanti was named after a Greek one).

 

Rob thanks a lot for the pix.  This does bring back a lot of memories for me.