A Brief
History of the
Story Inn
This area of the state now appropriately called Indiana was opened to European settlement on September 30, 1809, upon the consummation of a treaty between Governor William Henry Harrison and the Miami Indians. The so-called "Ten O'clock Treaty" opened three million acres to settlement, the boundary being a line running from Raccoon Creek on the Wabash River near Montezuma to Seymour, marked by a shadow cast at 10:00 a.m. each September 30. That line passed right through the heart of what would become the town of Story.
The village of Story itself was
founded in 1851, with the grant of a land patent from President Millard Fillmore
to Dr. George Story. This original land patent is on display at the Story Inn.
Dr. Story was a medical doctor who hailed from a clan of timber harvesters in
southern Ohio. He and his progeny built many of the structures which
distinguish this town today from the then-ample supply of domestic hardwoods.
Most significantly, his home and medical office nearby both managed to survive
the forces of entropy.
Story soon became the largest settlement in the area. In its heyday (1880-1929)
the village supported two general stores, a nondenominational church, a one-room
schoolhouse, a grain mill, a sawmill, a slaughterhouse, a blacksmith’s forge and
a post office.
Story never recovered from the Great Depression (1929-1933), as families
abandoned their hilly, marginal farms in search of work elsewhere, a departure
plucked from The Grapes of Wrath.
Brown County lost half
of its population between 1930 and 1940. This exodus of people paved the way for
the creation of the
Brown County
State Park and the
Hoosier National
Forest, as farmland escheated to the government for non-payment of taxes.
For that reason, Brown County is 80% forested today (second-growth, but still
impressively mature).
The economic hardship also fostered a cottage industry producing bathtub gin of rather dubious quality, an activity which apparently kept the grain mill at Story occupied well into the 1930's. Sheriff Clarence Moore made local headlines in 1932 when he captured a still at Story; today his aged daughter discloses that several gallons disappeared from the evidence room. Sheriff Moore's grandson now serves as the Story Inn's wine steward.
The brain trust known as the United States Army Corps of Engineers flooded the area in 1960, creating Lake Monroe, Indiana's second largest lake, but consequently inundating the little town of Elkinsville and cutting Story's access to Bloomington via Elkinsville Road. Elkinsville Road is Story's main street, which now dead-ends four miles to the west at a fallen iron bridge, just past the marker denoting the spot where a town had to die so that the Bloomington Yacht Club could be born. Thusly isolated, Story's economic fate was sealed. Story’s General Store limped along until the Nixon Administration, dispensing Moon Pies, Nehi sodas and leaded gasoline (at the then outrageous price of nearly 40 cents per gallon). The Gold and Red Crown Standard gas pumps today stand as silent witness to that pre-OPEC era of profligate energy consumption.
This paucity of capital was, in retrospect, a blessing. No new construction
followed the Great Depression, and fortuitously, no one attempted to "modernize"
the venerable but aging structures at Story when the rest of the nation embarked
upon a McCarthy-esque campaign to eliminate unsightly wooden floors, stamped tin
metal ceilings and globe lighting and replace them with shiny asbestos floor
tiles and dropped fiberboard ceilings sporting snazzy new recessed neon bulbs.
Amazingly, the town was not even electrified until 1949. For that reason, Story
is perhaps the best preserved example of a 19th century small town that survives
in the American Midwest.
The entire town of Story, Indiana is now a country inn/bed & breakfast, offering
fine dining,
catering, and
lodging. The second floor of
the Old General Store (briefly a Studebaker buggy factory in the 1920’s) has
been renovated into four quaint bed & breakfast accommodations notable for their
year-round occupant, the "Blue
Lady." The Blue Lady is a mirthful albeit innocuous apparition with flowing
white robes, whose cheeky behavior has been observed by Story Inn employees and
recorded in guest books since the 1970’s. Current management notes that the
frequency of her appearances increased markedly after 2001, coinciding with the
arrival of a complementary bottle of privately-labeled
Riesling in each room. The
old sawmill,
Doc Story’s
homestead, the
Alra
Wheeler homestead, the
Carriage House,
and other historic buildings around town have each been tastefully and
authentically renovated into guest cottages, many with kitchenettes and hot
tubs. You may take a virtual tour of the rooms by clicking
here.
Story’s Old General Store, replete with its creaky wooden floors, pot-bellied
stove and long-retired Standard Oil Crown gas pumps out front, is now a
celebrated gourmet
restaurant known as the "Story Inn." In this unparalleled ambiance, guests
can now enjoy such dishes as locally-raised Bison Fillet, New Zealand Imported
Rack of Lamb, Marinated Boneless Breast of Duck, or Linguini al Frutti di Mare
with a fine California Cabernet or German Gewuertztraminer, and topped with a
fresh fruit cobbler or crème caramel. The
restaurant is open
every day but Monday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinners are by
reservation only.
Seasonal hours may apply, so we recommend that you call in advance
November-March, just in case we’ve gone fishing.
Nature has reclaimed most of Brown County, and today the area surrounding Story
is wild and natural. Story sits at the edge of Salt Creek, a labyrinthine 100
mile system of quiet, slow-moving tributaries which now form the backwaters of
Lake Monroe. This moist bottomland, now under the protection of the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources, is a spectacular spawning ground for fish and
fowl alike, a place of serenity and raw beauty found nowhere else in Indiana. It
is now possible to explore this area by
canoe. Alternatively,
you can hike
Browning Mountain and see the "Healing Stones," a pre-Columbian geometric
rock formation (Brown County's Stonehenge), or challenge
Nebo
Ridge on a mountain bike.
This is a picture of the restaurant, it was a great place to eat. |
The scenery through rural southern Indiana. |
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