the BEACON Newspaper, Indiana beaconweb9-18 | Page 10

Page 10A
THE BEACON
September 2018
Brookville Lake - Historic Change for a Small Town
By Mary-Alice Helms
It looms over the north end
of Brookville like a sleeping
giant. It has been both cursed
and praised for more than 40
years, providing a livelihood
for some and displacing oth-
ers. It is the Brookville Dam,
built in 1974 by the United
States Army Corps of Engi-
neers. The lake that it created
is the deepest in Indiana, and
the most beautiful, according
to many of its admirers. It has
drawn thousands of visitors to
its 11,000 acre park. The lake
itself covers 5200 acres and
it is believed by many that an
equivalent number of acres, or
more, have been saved from
devastating flooding over the
past forty-four years.
The building of the dam was
a very controversial subject. I
remember first hearing rumors
of the possibility that Franklin
County might be selected as
the site for a huge government
project. I think that I was in
high school at the time. There
were no definite plans or ideas
about what that project might
be, just that there was talk
about some big-time change in
the future for our little town.
I didn’t like the idea of
change coming to Brookville.
I liked it just as it was. I loved
that my friends and I could
walk, roller skate or bicycle
anywhere we wanted to go,
feeling perfectly safe. I loved
that we could walk to Maggie
Wright’s drugstore, The Dairy
Bar or Hilda Wirtz’s shop for
ice cream or cokes. I loved
playing my flute in the
band when we had concerts on
the courthouse lawn or marched
in the Memorial Day parade.
I loved that we knew almost
everyone we saw and that we
were greeted by name. How
would all of that change if
Brookville should become a
bigger town filled with strangers?
The rumors would pop
up and then die down again
over the years. Then in 1959,
winter rains came while the
ground was still frozen and
the town was flooded. I re-
member standing at the top of
Oregon Hill at the south end
of town and seeing flood wa-
ters reaching the second floor
of some of the houses in the
valley below. It was then that
a Flood Control Committee
was formed, and went to work
Whitetail Acres
Christmas Tree Farm
Reindeer
Adventure
Name the baby
reindeer and Win
a free adventure
in earnest on a flood control
project, which would include
a dam and lake. It took 15
years of meetings, debates and
politicking before the dam
was finally built in 1974.
Controversial? Oh, my!
Friendships were broken,
family disagreements caused
irreparable rifts among the
members, and meetings were
broken up by impassione