About Southern Indiana

West Baden Springs Hotel

French Lick Hotel by W9NED

The West Baden Springs Hotel is a his­toric land­mark hotel in the town of West Baden Springs in Orange County, Indi­ana, USA, known for its vast domed atrium. It is cur­rently part of the French Lick Resort Casino com­plex. Prior to the com­ple­tion of the Assem­bly Hall at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Urbana-Champaign in 1963, the build­ing had the largest free-spanning dome in the United States and was the largest in the world from 1902 to 1913.

Christ­mas a child’s view by W9NED

A group that included Lee Wiley Sin­clair from Salem, Indi­ana acquired con­trol­ling inter­est in the hotel in 1888. Sin­clair soon became sole owner and trans­formed it into a sophis­ti­cated resort, includ­ing an opera house, a casino—advertised as “The Carls­bad of Amer­ica” and a two-deck, cov­ered, one-third-mile oval bicy­cle and pony track. A lighted base­ball dia­mond in the cen­ter of the track became the spring train­ing grounds for sev­eral major league teams includ­ing the Cincin­nati Reds, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs and Pitts­burgh Pirates. Fire destroyed the entire hotel build­ing in less than two hours in June, 1901; how­ever, no guests were injured. Owner Lee Sin­clair declared that the new hotel would be fire­proof and would have the world’s largest dome. Most pro­fes­sion­als in the archi­tec­tural com­mu­nity con­sid­ered it impos­si­ble, but unknown West Vir­ginia archi­tect Har­ri­son Albright com­pleted the new West Baden Springs Hotel on time.

The new struc­ture opened in Sep­tem­ber 1902 and if the adver­tise­ments and arti­cles about the new hotel were true, the facil­ity deserved being called the Eighth Won­der of the World. It was claimed that the resort’s min­eral baths and drink­ing waters could cure every­thing from steril­ity to senil­ity. The hotel’s ameni­ties included two golf courses, bil­liards, bowl­ing, base­ball, swim­ming, horse­back rid­ing, bicy­cling and hik­ing on scenic trails, movies and nightly the­atre. On-site per­sonal ser­vices included a stock bro­ker­age, bank­ing and a bar­ber­shop. Birds flew freely in the 200-foot-diameter atrium, and an enor­mous fire­place burned 14-foot logs to take the chill off on cool evenings.

French Lick Dome 5909 x 3951 by W9NED

Vacant after 1983, the build­ing slipped into extreme decay, result­ing in the col­lapse of a good por­tion of the west wall in 1991. In 1992, the National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion listed the hotel as one of America’s most endan­gered places. Bill Cook, a Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana, entre­pre­neur and bil­lion­aire, financed a par­tial restora­tion of the prop­erty by the His­toric Land­marks Foun­da­tion of Indi­ana which assumed own­er­ship in 1996. It was mar­keted nation­ally for almost ten years with­out a buyer and over 400,000 vis­i­tors toured the hotel.

In 2006, title was trans­ferred to a sub­sidiary of Bill Cook’s Cook Group to become a part of the French Lick Resort Casino devel­op­ment. In May 2007, the build­ing began host­ing guests as a hotel in 246 lux­ury rooms for the first time since 1932. In 2009, AAA rec­og­nized the hotel as one of the top 10 U.S. his­toric hotels.

http://​www​.french​lick​.com/​a​b​o​u​t​U​s​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​w​b​s​h​.​jsp

http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​W​e​s​t​_​B​a​d​e​n​_​S​p​r​i​n​g​s​_​H​o​tel

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Spring Mill State Park

Spring Mill State Park is a 1,319-acre (5 km²) state park in the state of Indi­ana. The park is located to the south of Bloom­ing­ton, about 3 miles (5 km) east of the town of Mitchell on Indi­ana High­way 60.

After fight­ing the War of 1812, Samuel Jack­son Jr. came to the area with his fam­ily and built a home and small wooden mill. When Indi­ana became a state in 1816, Jack­son became owner of the val­ley. Two wealthy land devel­op­ers, the Bul­litt broth­ers, pur­chased the land from Jack­son in 1817 and con­structed a three-story lime­stone mill. As more peo­ple began to set­tle south­ern Indi­ana, busi­ness at the mill began to boom. The next own­ers, the Mont­gomery broth­ers, added a sawmill, dis­tillery, tav­ern and post office. The Hamer broth­ers owned the land next, remod­el­ing the two exist­ing homes, start­ing a school, and nam­ing the vil­lage “Spring Mill”. It was under the Hamer broth­ers that Spring Mill reached its peak, with vil­lage goods being sold in Louisville and New Orleans. Busi­ness declined in the fol­low­ing years with the arrival of the rail­road and the Civil War. There were twenty fam­i­lies liv­ing in Spring Mill in the 1850s. In 1896 a cement com­pany pur­chased the land, and the vil­lage was deserted.

A pio­neer vil­lage can also be found in a val­ley in the park, fea­tur­ing a his­toric grist mill, black­smith shop, tav­ern, dis­tillery, gar­dens, and sev­eral other struc­tures. A stream runs through the vil­lage, which is fed by a spring in Hamer Cave and pow­ers the grist mill. Inter­pre­tive nat­u­ral­ists play pio­neers from the 1860s and demon­strate trades of the day. The Hamer Ceme­tery is located south of the vil­lage and the graves of sev­eral vil­lage res­i­dents from the mid-1800s are found there, as well as many more mod­ern graves. The area, 295 acres (1.19 km²) total, was pur­chased for the state park from a cement com­pany for a sin­gle dol­lar. The vil­lage had been pros­per­ing in the mid 1800s, but when the Bal­ti­more and Ohio Rail­road bypassed it later in the cen­tury, it had become a ghost town. After acquir­ing the prop­erty, Richard Lieber and E.Y. Guernsey began recon­struc­tion of the vil­lage, with six build­ings being orig­i­nal, six being recon­structed, and four being moved to the property.

The park is located on the Mitchell Karst Plain, which allowed the park’s caves and sink­holes to form in the lime­stone. The caves include Bron­son Cave, Twin Caves, Shawnee Cave (Don­ald­son Cave), Hamer Cave, and oth­ers. A boat tour of Twin Caves is run by the Indi­ana Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources, which trav­els about 500 feet (150 m) into the cave. Don­ald­son Cave has a wet and dry side; the dry side is open for exploration.

http://​www​.in​.gov/​d​n​r​/​p​a​r​k​l​a​k​e​/​2​9​6​8​.​htm
http://​indi​ana​-travel​.suit​e101​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​c​f​m​/​s​p​r​i​n​g​_​m​i​l​l​_​s​t​a​t​e​_​p​a​r​k​_​a​n​d​_​i​n​n​_​m​i​t​c​h​e​l​l​_​i​n​d​i​ana

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