RIGHT HERE IN INDIANA.

Lost River Disappears, Then Re-emerges An Artesian Spring 
(National Road Traveler, Cambridge City, July 13, 1967)

Most Hoosier streams meander. The flow of a number of them is intermittent and seasonal. But only in the distinctive karst country of southwestern Indiana is there a sizeable stream which disappears into the earth entirely and then, some miles away, returns to the surface like a gushing spring. This phenomenon is called Lost River. It is one of the outstanding features in a scenic and historic region long famous for its mineral springs, caves, sinkholes and other limestone oddities. The region is the only part of Indiana never covered by Ice Age glaciers. It abounds in caves and extends into Kentucky. In Indiana it runs down through Putnam, Owen, Greene, Monroe, Lawrence, Martin, Orange, Washington, Harrison and Floyd Counties. Geologists call it the Mitchell Plain. Crawford Upland is to the west of the Mitchell Plain and the Norman Upland is to the east. These two uplands have the most topography with the greatest terrain contract in Hoosierland. Frequently in the Mitchell Plain the solvent action of water on limestone has produced sinkholes, caves and underground water routes. Some sinkholes are 50 feet deep and six acres in area. This karst situation also makes for fewer and smaller surface streams as well as for natural bridges, poorly drained land, and a repetitious undulation or roll of the land.

Southern Indiana contains more than 400 known caves and hundreds of springs. The most famous of the caverns - the Wyandotte Caves - were purchased recently by the Indiana Dept of Natural Resources. The smaller cave is now open for guided tours and the larger cave will be opened as soon as certain safety measures are completed. The Wyandotte Caves are now a part of the state-operated recreation area being developed at the Harrison-Crawford State Forest. Eventually it will include 25,000 acres and both banks of Blue River for many miles. The famous Indiana limestone was formed from lime ooze and beds of shell fragments at the bottom of shallow seas that existed 300 million years ago. The region became land about 200 million years ago.

Lost River rises near Smedley's Station in Washington County at an altitude of 900 feet above sea level. In its first dozen miles there is little evidence of sinkholes as it advances through a broad shallow valley. However, just east of the Washington-Orange County line, the channel deepens to 75 feet. Sinkholes and springs begin to appear. By the time Lost River is five miles into Orange County its bed has dropped 200 feet. Its water begins to disappear in sinkholes. The major sink is about 23 miles southeast of Orleans, in northern Orange County. When white settlers came to the region they found several Shawnee Indian villages there, as well as elseqhere in the county. During dry weather Lost River disappears entirely. Then, about one mile south of Orangeville, it bubbles up again as an artesian spring. The altitude of this "spring" is 400 feet and the linear distance is about eight miles from where the river submerged. Although the wandering and usually-dry bed is 21 miles long, the subsurface route of the river seems to be in a virtually straight line. The sub-surface course is a complex system of mains and leads and not a single stream, however. A smaller stream - Stampers Creek - is similar in its hide-and-seek tactics but it does not have a completely-dry bed.

There are many other natural phenomena and unusual scenic features in this part of Indiana, some of which have been purchased and developed as State-operated properties. Spring Mill State Park, in Lawrence County north of Orange, includes caves, springs, and rocky streams as well as its virgin timber and famous mill and reconstructed pioneer village. Spring Valley State Fish and Game Area is in Orange County. Hindostan Falls State Fishing Area is in Martin County. Jackson-Washington State Forest as well as Elk Creek State Fishing Area are in Washington County. Clark State Forest is in Dubois County.

Several famous Indian traces and animal trails led through Orange County. The Cincinnati Trace - from Cincinnati to Vincennes -passed through the present town of Orleans. West Baden and French Lick were known as mineral water spas long before the white pioneers arrived. The Indians most frequently followed the buffalo trace which led from the Falls of the Ohio (now Jeffersonville and New Albany) to Vincennes. Buffalo, deer, bear and other animals sought the salt at French Lick. There was a French fort at French Lick in the early 1700s. The American community there was founded in 1811.

A North Carolina Quaker - John Lindley - came up the Wabash valley in 1809, planning to found a Friends colony in Vigo County near Fort Harrison (Terre Haute). His oldest son, Zachariah, had stayed a bit behind and built a grist mill at the bend of Lick Creek in what is now Orange County, in 1808. Joel Chambers, another Tar Heel, built a cabin that same year on Lick Creek near half Moon Springs. Joel Charles and his son William soon followed. The Wyatt Hanks family came to live near the Lindleys in 1810.

Jonathan Lindley decided that Orange County was preferable being closer than Vigo County to the Ohio River and its outlet to down stream markets and also abounding in springs. He returned to North Carolina to lead a group of 80 settlers - more than two-thirds of the Quakers. Lindley was accompanied by his wife, Deborah Dix Lindley, and their 12 children. She died soon after reaching the new country. Lindley then married a widow, Martha Sandra Henley, who also had 12 children. They themselves had a baby, and thus their family totaled 27. Lindley became truly friendly with the Shawnee and Delaware, Indians, who were all about. They remained peaceful for the most part when the frontier flared into violence with the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, and then with the War of 1812. After William Charles was scalped by Indians in Orange County in 1811, the settlers took the precaution of building numerous blockhouses and a big stockade, the latter near the site of the present county seat of Paoli. They were seldom used.

In 1811 a log Friends Meeting house was built near Chambersburg. Lick Creek Meeinghouse, also of logs, was erected at Paoli in 1813. The town had been founded less than two years before on some of Jonathan's land. Almost immediately it received the status of a Friends Monthy Meeting. In 1825 a frame meeting house was built at Paoli and the third Lick Creek Meetinghouse was constructed in 1860. Newberry Meetinghouse was built west of Paoli in 1818. Beach Chapel, a unit of Lick Creek Meeting, was created south of Paoli on Lick Creek in 1826. The continued Quaker immigration from Virginia, Tennessee and the Carolinas enabled the Lick Creek Monthly Meeting to become part of the West Branch Quarterly Meeting of Ohio. The Methodists built their first Paoli church in 1816 and the Presbyterians also formed a congregation about that time. The first public school was opened at Paoli in 1817, only one year after establishment of Indiana as a State.

Capt Spier Spencer's Rangers - called the "The Yellow Jackets" - passed through Paoli on Sept 14, 1811, en route from Corydon to Vincennes and Tippecanoe. When General Harrison was an overnight guest of Jonathan Lindley, Zachariah joined his army and was wounded at Tippecanoe. He returned home, not to be dismissed from the church because of his military service but to be elected Orange County's first sheriff.

Orange County was created from Knox and Clark Counties in February, 1816. It ws the 15th and last of the counties established under the Territory government. Indiana became a state that December. For a time the new Orange County also included what is now Lawrence County and much of the present Monroe County. The area was such an historic crossroads that four different Indian Treaties were necessary to complete transfer of land titles to the white settlers. Indeed, there are evidences that long before the latter-day Indiana mound builders occupied the area, the sulphur and saline waters and their medicinal effects seems to have been known to centuries of men as well as to the animals.

Originally the federal government had retained French Lick as a source of salt. Huge iron kettles were used to boil the water and the salt thus preciitated was eagerly bought by the entire area. In 1816, the federal government transferred French Lick to state control. It was sold in 1832 when the state decided the salt-making was a losing venture. The new purchaser was Dr. William A Bowles, a rather controversial Carolina Baptist minister who turned to study of medicine. Bowles built a three-story frame hotel at French Lick in 1840 and operated it as a health resort. Bowles died in 1873. His heirs in 1880 sold the French Lick tract to H E Wells and J M Andrews. In 1902 Thomas Taggart, who was three times Mayor of Indianapolis, built a sumptuous hotel at French Lick and enlarged the property to 4,000 acres. Taggart, who had prospered as proprietor of the restaurant at the much-traveled Indianapolis Union Railway Station, later was a United States Senator and Democratic national Chairman.

French Lick Springs Hotel and nearby West Baden Springs Hotel attracted a worldwide clientele. As many as 100 private railway cars would be parked at one time at the French Lick siding. The wealthy came to drink medicinal waters, to take mineral baths, and to patronize  the lively gambling casinos. The automobile era and then the jet airplane altered the pattern of rich men's diversions. Today French Lick's Sheraton Hotel caters to all economic classes and West Baden's 700-room hotel, built in 1901 and including a vast famed dome, is a unit of Northwood College. From 1834 to 1864 it was a Jesuit theological seminary.