Compare how railroad lines changed Hoosier history at Spring Mill presentation

The Herald-Times
·1 min read
Pioneer Village at Spring Mill State Park
Pioneer Village at Spring Mill State Park

Spring Mill State Park will host a presentation at 2 p.m. June 17 in the Pioneer Village Tavern entitled, "What do Railroads Do?"

In the 1850’s Hoosiers were crazy for railroads, according to a press release from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Two long distance lines were built through Lawrence County very close to Spring Mill, with one of them running a few hundred yards from the Grist Mill.

No budget: Indiana University Bloomington closes Food Institute after nearly a decade

Hoosiers loved railroads but the railroads didn’t always love them back. The proximity of railroads undermined the milling business at Spring Mill while encouraging flour milling just 2 miles away in Mitchell.

In Jackson County, the same scenario played out, where the Rockford mill closed but then reopened nearby in the new railroad town of Seymour. This presentation — with photos, maps, and documents — explores and compares those two railroad transformations.

What did they find? Hundreds of artifacts unearthed in Spring Mill State Park

Presenter David Nord is a professor emeritus of journalism and adjunct professor emeritus of history at Indiana University. He is the author of "Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing," "The Birth of Mass Media in America" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) and "Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers" (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

He is a former interim editor and associate editor of the Journal of American History of Spring Mill and Lawrence County. A recent project is Mapping Lawrence County, Indiana: An Annotated Bibliography 1818 to 1941 (Bedford Indiana: Lawrence County Museum of History, 2018). It is available as a downloadable PDF through the online Catalogs of the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Library and IU-Bloomington.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Spring Mill State Park offers lesson in Hoosier railroad history