Historical Activities: Day Trip to Barker Mansion, Michigan City, Indiana

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Michigan City, Indiana

Illinois Dames, their guests, prospective members and candidates spent a delightful day in Indiana, learning about the Barkers, their mansion, the Haskell & Barker Car Company and surrounding Michigan City.  After a private guided tour of the Barker Mansion, we enjoyed lunch at Pottawattomie Country Club. John H. Barker was one of the founding members of this club, which is surrounded by the spectacular “naturalist” golf course designed by Tom Bendelow in 1909. Bendelow was the “The Johnny Appleseed of American Golf” and among his 600 course designs are Olympia Fields and Medinah Country Clubs. Next, we explored a selection of John Lloyd Wright residential commissions along the lake front. Before heading home, we stopped at Shady Creek Winery to learn about how this Indiana winery without vineyards produces award winning wines.

Dunes, boxcars and blue Ball jars:  as neophytes, we gained historical appreciation not only for the Barker legacy but also for the once adjacent Hoosier Slide, the tallest sand dune of the time (and where now stands a water cooling tower).  Who knew that Indiana’s most famous landmark disappeared by the shovelful, with some of the sand used for the 1893 Columbia World’s Fair/Jackson Park and still more sand being melted into the iconic blue glass for Ball jars in Muncie, Indiana!  Thank you to Dames Diane Curtis, Carla Carstens Herr and Judith Urban for giving us a day to remember.