Tag:History
Heritage Park Pergola Dedication
The Heritage Park Pergola Dedication was in the Culver Citizen last week. The project was built by Easterday Construction Co., Inc. in the 90’s. It was commissioned by Richard Ford. I’ve discussed it here, here and here in the past.
One of the cool things about working in construction is the ability to drive around our area and see the projects that become history over time. Great Grandpa Easterday wasn’t the best about recording the early history of Easterday Construction… He was too busy running a business! But for those of us that remember, we see reminders of our beginnings as we look around Culver and throughout our region.
The Pony Barn remains adjacent to the Easterday Construction Co., Inc. office as a reminder of when the site was the Easterday beef farm at the edge of town. (Before the high school was built, neighborhood kids would ride their bikes to the north end of Slate Street and feed treats to the Grandpa Easterday’s Hereford Cattle in the field there.) The dedication marker on the elementary school gym is a reminder of a depression era project we completed, when we had a three digit phone number and our offices were in on the top floor of the State Exchange Bank Building (Now First Farmers Bank & Trust). Those that remember that history are disappearing. Only the 3rd and 4th generations of the Easterday Construction family remain and some of them have passed on. Those of us that are left still remain proud of the mark we have left in the history of Culver and surrounding communities.
Musings on Tamarack Road
At Tuesday night’s Culver Town Council Meeting, Town Manager, Ginny Munroe reported on the annexation progress for the “Tamarack Road project”. This is the storage facility project proposed by Beachview Properties LLC at 18710 Tamarack Road.
I get why it is referred to by the Tamarack Road moniker since that is the property address, but it has me thinking about the future. While this is truly none of my business, I would anticipate the future business on that site will want a West Shore Drive address. That would be more recognizable than Tamarack. But will it or should it remain Tamarack Road after the annexation?
Currently South Main Street becomes Tamarack Road at the town limits. I’d need to consult our local historians, Jeff Kinney or Kurt Garner, but I assume South Main Street was Tamarack Road until some point in the past. This seems likely since on the north side of Culver, School Street becomes Tamarack Road again at the town limits.
I assume the street/road will need to be addressed by the Town and County as part of the annexation processes. Situations like this, where one side of the road is annexed, but not the other side aren’t particularly clean. The County is generally more than happy to transfer the road and it’s associated maintenance to the Town. The Town generally wants to negotiate some kind of split where costs are shared until such time as the other side is annexed. This leads to fun questions like does each entity only plow their half during snow events?
Assuming the Town and County work out some amicable agreement, what happens to the name? Does it remain Tamarack Road or does it become the next section of South Main Street? Circling back to the address question, would the future business see more benefit to addressing themselves as being on Main Street?
In all reality, is South Main Street really the appropriate name for even the existing portion of this street? Generally “Main Street” designates the main business district of a community. (Often communities move on and Main Street becomes relegated to a side street.) In my limited knowledge, there were only one business on that section of street in the past. There was a florist shop on the east side of the street just north of the Masonic Cemetery. That business has been gone for decades. Currently South Main Street is solely residential and assuming the Comp Plan is followed, not to mention the current plans for The Dunes, this area will be totally residential for the foreseeable future. Given that and the fact that it doesn’t even line up with Main Street proper, makes the naming question more interesting.
I don’t really have strong feelings on any of this. Just musing about the possible future and it’s ties to the past…
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After writing Tamarack multiple times in this post, I took a drive down this road and didn’t spot a single Tamarack tree, thus I’m assuming the name is due to Marshall County’s peculiar choice to name north-south roads after trees in a mostly alphabetical order.
The Remnant Trust
February 24, 2025
Kevin Berger
Blast from the Past, Commentary, projects
Community, Easterday Construction, History, Tips, Warsaw
Somewhat a Blast from the Past last week was the discovery of a display of artifacts from The Remnant Trust at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis. Their mission to preserve historic documents promoting individual liberty and human dignity led them to possess original copies of the Declaration of Independence and others even older, written by the likes of Isaac Newton and Aristotle.
In 2010, we met with the founder of The Remnant Trust, Brian Bex, to discuss an OrthoWorx project to house some of their documents in the former Billy Sunday Museum in Winona Lake. (Billy Sunday was a professional baseball player from the Warsaw area, turned evangelist.) OrthoWorx considered this project part of their effort to address the “trailing spouse” issue they had when attracting employees for the Warsaw Orthopedics industry. Executives being recruited to work in Warsaw reported pushback from their spouses who would rather live in a more urban environment with the associated amenities.
The existing building had a lot of rustic shiplap pine woodwork and didn’t have the feel they wanted for a scholarly museum. Office space was limited and the HVAC was inadequate. It also still had much of the Billy Sunday memorabilia in place. Despite all of this, the price was right and we were hired to implement the renovation. The plans for this renovation were completed by Scearce Rudisel Architects (now SRKM Architecture), under the direction of Mary Ellen Rudisel.
New lighting, office space and flooring were part of the overall renovation giving the space a more updated feel. Some of the woodwork was salvaged and relocated to keep the theme consistent. But the main focus was the vault.
The vault would be where the documents would be stored. Most of these would be stored on shelving in standard library manner, while others were placed in their own cases. It was designed to look unassuming, but that belied the underlying construction. Special effort was made to seal the space so that it was protected from the elements. Walls were steel stud construction with double layers of abuse resistant drywall. The door was designed to look like a standard door, but serve as a high security vault door with environmental seals. Special lighting was installed to assure that no detrimental affects to the documents would be caused. The space was also environmentally controlled by a redundant, high-end HVAC system with temperature control that would keep the vault within 1 degree of temperature set point and within 1 percent of humidity set point whether the vault was empty or occupied. Occupancy varied, since it was vacant the majority of the time, but also allowed for visiting scholars as well as school classes and the occasional Remnant Trust party of 30 or more.
One of the interesting tenets of The Remnant Trust is that these works, while revered, should be accessible. Visiting scholars could be seen wearing gloves and turning pages with microspatulas while visitors from the public are allowed to touch these documents, some many hundreds of years old.
Unfortunately, after a few years at this location, The Remnant Trust found a university benefactor and moved the collection to another location. Warsaw did not prove out to be the best location for visiting scholars and for sharing their collection. It’s a loss to our area. But seeing the smaller display in the Columbia Club reminded me of their work. You can make an appointment to for a private tour here, though it’s open to guests and members to walk through anytime.
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