Category Archives: Indiana

In a residential neighborhood in the town of Corydon, Indiana is an old tree trunk protected by a stone monument. It looks rather strange, but if you know the importance of the old tree, it makes perfect sense. In 1816, President James Madison signed into law a bill that created the state of Indiana. Delegates met in Corydon to write the state’s first Constitution. Corydon was chosen as the first capital because it was centrally located to most of the state’s population at the time. As they began work on the new document in June, the building they were working in became unbearably hot. The group decided to move outside and work under the branches of a large elm tree.

The Constitutional Convention lasted 19 days. On the last day, June 29, 1816, the state constitution was adopted by a majority vote. It included several progressive laws, like a ban on slavery and the first mandate for funding public schools in the country. The Constitutional Elm became a symbol of Indiana’s statehood, and the tree has been honored by Hoosiers over the years. In the 1920s, the historic tree was ravaged by Dutch Elm disease. Efforts were made to try and save it, but eventually they failed. To preserve what they could for future generations, the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution had the branches cut off and sold pieces for souvenirs. A stone monument was built around the remaining trunk. Over the years, several attempts have been made to preserve it from dry rot and decay. In the early days, it was covered with coal tar. More recently, since 2016, the Indiana State Museum has been working to preserve the historic tree or at least what remains of it.

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Highland Park is located to the south of downtown Kokomo, Indiana. There you will find a visitors center with rooms on either side surrounded with windows. They are not there for people to look out of but rather for people to peer through to view what is inside. The building holds two of Indiana’s largest treasures. One is a large sycamore stump. The tree stood a few miles west of Kokomo and is said to be over one hundred feet tall and over 1500 years old. The enormous tree came down in a storm in the early 1900s. Enthralled by the size of the stump, in 1916, Jacob Bergman, commissioner of Kokomo’s city park, paid a farmer to haul the massive stump to the park with his tractor. The stump was 57 feet around, 18 feet wide and 12 feet tall, and Bergman had plans to cut a doorway in it and build a staircase in the hollow stump to a viewing platform on top. His plans never materialized ,and the stump sat outside for years. In 1938, the National Youth Administration built an open air shelter around the stump. In 1989, it was enclosed as part of a new pavilion with another of Kokomo’s prized possessions.

Old Ben, the World’s Largest Steer, was large from the time it was born in 1902. Weighing almost 125 pounds at birth, he grew to weigh about 4500 pounds, well above the average weight for most steers, which is about 1200 pounds. The owners, who lived about ten miles north of Kokomo, had several offers to purchase him for circuses and sideshows, but they kept him for themselves. They traveled to many Indiana fairs and showed him to the public in his own private tent. At his death in 1910, he was 16 feet long from nose to tail. After his death, Old Ben was stuffed and mounted on a base with wheels. He was either donated or sold to the city of Kokomo. They kept him in storage and put him on display at times for the public to marvel at how large he is. After the building was completed in 1989, he was put on permanent display opposite the sycamore stump.

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