Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Bloomington, IN
A stone marker on the Monroe County Courthouse grounds commemorates the point calculated as the geographic center of the United States population after the 1910 Census. The actual statistical point reflected the country's westward population shift, turning an abstract census calculation into a physical downtown landmark.
Evansville, IN
Between roughly A.D. 1000 and 1450, Mississippian people built a major town here containing large earthen platform mounds, plazas and houses. The preserved archaeological site and museum allow visitors to encounter the landscape without treating the Indigenous city as a mysterious or vanished-civilization legend.
Osgood, IN
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Surveyor Jasper Bilby designed a distinctive steel surveying tower in the 1920s that could be erected quickly above trees and terrain. One surviving tower stands near Osgood as a rare monument to the pre-satellite era of precision mapping.
Evansville, IN
Opened in 1915, Bosse Field is one of the oldest professional baseball parks still in regular use in the United States. It became even more recognizable after appearing as Racine's ballpark in the 1992 film A League of Their Own, and visitors can see it during games and scheduled events.
Aurora, IN
Aurora Schuck was buried at River View Cemetery in 1989 inside her red 1976 Cadillac Eldorado, reportedly requiring a burial area spanning multiple normal grave plots. Nothing dramatic rises above the burial today, but the cemetery itself is public and the bizarre interment story gives the site an unusually literal connection between car culture and burial custom.
Edinburgh, IN
Italian prisoners of war held at Camp Atterbury built this tiny Catholic chapel in 1943 using limited and salvaged materials. Restored after later vandalism and fire damage, the Chapel in the Meadow survives as a rare physical remnant of the camp's World War II prisoner compound.
Beverly Shores, IN
Five experimental houses from Chicago's 1933–34 Century of Progress World's Fair were moved across Lake Michigan to Indiana after the exposition. Their futuristic materials and designs survive along the lakeshore in Indiana Dunes National Park; exteriors can be viewed year-round, while interior tours are normally limited to special events.
Plymouth, IN
A 17-foot granite memorial marks the homeland of Potawatomi leader Menominee and the starting area associated with the forced 1838 removal remembered as the Potawatomi Trail of Death. The monument was dedicated in 1909 and is significant as an early government-funded memorial to a Native American leader.
Chesterton, IN
City West was platted on the Lake Michigan shore in the 1830s with ambitions of becoming a major city and port. The Panic of 1837 helped kill the development, and shifting dunes eventually swallowed nearly every trace; the former townsite is now within Indiana Dunes State Park.
Corydon, IN
Delegates drafting Indiana's first state constitution met beneath a huge elm in Corydon in 1816 because the territorial capitol building was too hot. The tree died in 1925, but its enormous preserved trunk remains under a protective sandstone shelter at the historic site.
Harlan, IN
Archillous "Archie" Arnold's grave in Scipio Cemetery is flanked by two old parking meters, both permanently reading "Expired." The intentionally comic memorial turns an ordinary rural cemetery visit into one of Indiana's stranger examples of personalized grave art.
Evansville, IN
Elizabeth Harrison, a recognized leader within a nineteenth-century Romani traveling community, died in 1895 and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery after a funeral that drew widespread public attention. Her family monument remains in Section 23; historical sources often use the period title "Queen of the Gypsies," but OddWay should describe the site with the more respectful Romani terminology.
Goshen, IN
Built in 1939, this small fortified police booth was designed as a bullet-resistant downtown lookout during an era when Midwestern communities were still conscious of automobile-era gangsters. The tiny structure survives as a public reminder of how seriously towns once planned for armed criminals traveling the Lincoln Highway.
Merrillville, IN
George Molchan spent decades portraying Little Oscar for Oscar Mayer and traveling with the Wienermobile before retiring in 1987. His grave in Calumet Park Cemetery includes a bronze image of his costumed alter ego and the Wienermobile; it is in Section 19, Marker 901.
Shoals, IN
Hindostan was once a promising early Indiana settlement on the White River before disease and economic decline emptied the community in the 1820s. Little of the town survives today, but the public recreation area at Hindostan Falls preserves the landscape and remnants associated with one of the state's earliest ghost towns.
Indianapolis, IN
This sycamore grew from a seed carried around the Moon aboard Apollo 14 in 1971 as part of astronaut Stuart Roosa's famous seed experiment. Planted in Indianapolis during the U.S. Bicentennial era, it is one of the surviving "Moon Trees" scattered across the country.
Fairmount, IN
James Dean was returned to his hometown after his fatal 1955 automobile crash and buried in Park Cemetery north of Fairmount. Fans still visit the simple headstone, often leaving small memorial items or lipstick marks, making the cemetery one of the most enduring pilgrimage sites connected to the actor.
Indianapolis, IN
Bank robber John Dillinger was killed by federal agents in Chicago in 1934 and returned to Indianapolis for burial in Crown Hill Cemetery. His granite grave has long attracted visitors interested in Depression-era outlaw history and has reportedly been replaced or repaired after decades of souvenir damage.
Lagro, IN
Stone remains beside the Wabash River preserve part of a lock from the Wabash and Erie Canal, once one of the longest canal systems in North America. A public trail now passes the nineteenth-century masonry, allowing travelers to inspect infrastructure from a transportation network that almost completely disappeared.
Dyer, IN
In 1923, highway planners completed an experimental "Ideal Section" of the Lincoln Highway near Dyer to demonstrate what a modern road could be. The model section used unusually thick reinforced concrete along with drainage, lighting and pedestrian features, and a marker now identifies this influential piece of early highway engineering.
Wabash, IN
This family cemetery contains the grave of Maconaquah, the Miami woman long known in American histories as Frances Slocum after she was taken from her Pennsylvania family as a child and raised among the Miami. She later chose to remain with her Miami family rather than return east, making the cemetery an important physical site for a complicated story often flattened into frontier folklore.
Indianapolis, IN
Beneath Indianapolis' historic City Market lies roughly 20,000 square feet of brick and limestone passages once used for cool storage beneath the market halls. The catacombs have historically opened only for scheduled tours and were closed during City Market redevelopment, so access should be verified before OddWay routes a traveler inside.
Dupont, IN
Robert D. and Carol L. Hughes are commemorated in Dupont Cemetery with a large stone monument shaped like a precision micrometer, reflecting Robert's work in the tool-and-die trade. The unusual marker is visible from State Road 7 but should be approached with normal cemetery etiquette.
Wabash, IN
The shop's name recalls Modoc, a circus elephant that escaped in Wabash in 1942 and famously crashed through a downtown drugstore during the commotion. A business now operating at the historic location keeps the story alive with elephant imagery and local memorabilia.
