Southern Indiana Living . July / August 2021

A Walk in the Garden with Bob Hill
Hoosier History - and Hay
One thing I’ve always liked
about living in Southern Indiana
is that you can drive
about 30 miles in almost any
direction and travel back about 200
years into Hoosier and American history.
Such was the case on a recent
visit to O’Bannon Woods State Park
on the Ohio River southwest of Corydon,
where happenstance met history
and a three-story 1850s hay press.
The park is about as southcentral
as Indiana gets, right there
where the mostly ambling Blue River
drains into the Ohio River. Our visit
wasn’t all random journey, although
we are prone to just taking off on a
Sunday afternoon wandering back
roads leading through small towns,
old cemeteries, deep woods and rolling
farm fields in search of whatever
progress left us in its wake.
On this trip, we headed somewhat
directly into O’Bannon Woods
– after first pursuing a bald eagle nest
further up the road whose residents
were still at home.
We wanted to meet Hoosier history
head-on at O’Bannon with its
pioneer farmstead, nature center, hay
press, rock garden, ponds, wetlands,
horse trails, oxen and miniature donkeys.
It’s all there in Harrison County,
where John Hunt Morgan brought
Civil War to Indiana and where Cold
Friday Road leads into Cold Friday
Hollow – and not too far from Pophins
Hollow, Gas Well Hollow and
Haunted Hollow.
As it turns out, Cold Friday
Road runs over Potato Run Creek.
Further legend-investigation showed
that Cold Friday Road was so named
after the body of some stranger who
had been walking in the woods was
found along the road on what was
apparently a very cold day. And, yes,
a Friday. See what you find when you
amble slowly through Hoosier history?
O’Bannon Park’s previous name
– honoring a Native American tribe
shoved out of the Ohio River Valley
into Oklahoma more than 200 years
ago – was a little clumsy: The Wyandotte
Woods State Recreation Area.
Its name was changed in 2004 to
honor the late Gov. Frank O’Bannon,
a 1948 graduate of Corydon High
8 • July/Aug 2021 • Southern Indiana Living
School who served two years in the
Air Force and earned his law degree
from Indiana University in 1957. He
became a state senator and twiceelected
governor who actually cared
about getting along with, and helping,
the people he served. After his
death in 2003, about 3,000 homefolks
attended his funeral visitation
and service in Corydon. That alone
tells you something: He never forgot
where he came from.
The roughly 2,300-acre
O’Bannon Woods State Park offers a
fine mix of rolling woods, canoeing,
camping, hiking, birding and biking
– and really doesn’t get enough credit
for all that. If spelunking floats your
boat, there’s plenty of watery caves in
the region, too.
A 7-foot tall Ox at O’Bannon Woods State Park
The area had been severely
logged over by the early 1900s, then
reforested during the Depression by
the Civilian Conservation Corp., including
one of the few African American
CCC companies in those segregated
times.
The reforestation has worked
well. The park’s hills are now covered
in 90-year-old trees, adding a sense
of adventure as we wandered down
toward the nature center and Ohio
River. It was just fun to drive into the
place.
It was a slow tourist day and we
lucked into an interpretive naturalist
named Jim Lynch who invited us
into the nature center and then into
the 1850s barn with the hay press.
The original barn was built in the old
Leavenworth before Abe Lincoln –
who lived 14 youthful years in Indiana
not too far down the road – became
president.
The barn was moved and reconstructed
in O’Bannon Woods about
20 years ago. To gaze up and across
all those old, slightly twisted weathered
beams, to wonder at those who
first cut them down and then shaved,
hammered and wrestled them into
position was an education in itself.
The hay press built inside it –
and it’s only on working display
a few times in the summer, so call
ahead – was the direct result of need,
On the way back, we
stopped by a small barn
and pasture where the
two oxen, “Forrest” and
“Gump,” relax when
not pulling weights up
the O’Bannon Woods
hay chute. Each was
the size of a minivan
– in the 2,000- to
2,500-pound range
– and very friendly,
nestling up to us.
ingenuity and gravity.
Southern Indiana had hay badly
needed for horses, mules and donkeys
in Louisville and downriver. To
get it there, hand-cut hay, all timothy,
was forked into the second floor of
the barn from horse-drawn wagons
pulled up a long dirt ramp.
On the floor below, an ox – or
maybe mule or horse – was hooked to
a 350-pound weight that was pulled
up into a rectangular chute to the
third floor as a mule or horse below
walked in a counter-clockwise circle.
The new-cut hay was forked into a
door in the chute, the weight dropped