hour drive from Indianapolis. October would find 4,000-5,000 cars, with drivers and passengers alike, rubber-necking at the beautiful landscapes as they drove into Nashville for family suppers or to the Brown County State Park.
Wanda Bunge, who grew up on the Parsley family farm on Gatesville Road, said,“ Everything changed in the 50s.” She noted that the Parsley home got its first telephone and indoor bathroom. Gatesville Road and other gravel roads throughout the county were hard-surfaced and automobile-friendly.
Passable roads brought tourists with their pocketbooks to Brown County. They were attracted to the beautiful natural scenery that inspired the artists of the famous artist colony that started around 1908. Music lovers came to Bean Blossom to the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park and Campground, known and beloved by bluegrass and country music lovers internationally. Studios of potters, weavers, carvers, and crafters of musical instruments continue to this day.
Between Bloomington and Nashville, State Road 46 was improved until it was considered one of the best roads statewide. Drama students making up the company players for the Brown County Playhouse traveled the 16 miles from Indiana University to Nashville in the open bed of a truck for the Playhouse’ s earliest production in the summer of 1949. Charles“ Buzz” King wrote in an essay for 175 Years of Brown County how members of the DeMolay served as tour guides for the fall tourists. He said,“ That was around 1960. That was a fun time, and that was when the transition started. In’ 61 or’ 62, they started building 46. That alleviated the traffic coming in and that changed downtown forever.”
Barbara Livesey, a textile artist and collector of Brown County history and tidbits, noted when she moved to Brown County in 1998 that everyone driving a pickup truck carried a chainsaw,“ just in case a limb is down it can be cleared from the road.”
Jim Kelp, who served as Brown County’ s highway superintendent from January, 1994 until retiring in 2003, recounts helping out in the 1960s:“ Back then if we had a snowstorm, it took two men shoveling sand out of the back of the truck onto the road.” In 1994, there were four trucks with snowplows. If people couldn’ t get through due to snow, they would park the car and walk, returning the next day for their car.”
Founded about 1905 on the Illinois Central Railroad, Helmsburg was just two miles west of Bean Blossom. A nearby livery stable provided a buckboard for hire to take passengers to Nashville. A garage and filling station replaced the livery stable when the roadway provided a safe traveling surface for automobiles.
Employment was had in Monroe County, Bartholomew County, and even north in Indianapolis.
The roads led to the loss of the small communities. Post offices closed as mail was delivered to rural homes. The one-room schoolhouses were consolidated. Smithies and mills no longer peppered the hills.
Trails that became roadways retain their early names, and the settlements with names like Pikes Peak, Story, and Gnaw Bone have their own stories waiting to be discovered. •
Charley Wilson repairing a Brown County road, by Frank Hohenberger.
Jan./ Feb. 2023 • Our Brown County 47