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What do you consider the key accomplishment(s) of your county’s bicentennial celebration?
What Legacy Project do you most like to tell people about, and why?
Describe a highlight or most memorable moment related to your county's bicentennial celebration.
How/where are you preserving information and artifacts related to your county's celebration?
Do you have a website and/or social media presence (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)?
Total number of volunteers who participated.
Estimated total attendance.
Estimated dollar amount raised.
The first Elkhart County courthouse was completed in 1822. It stood on the site until it was demolished in 1869 to make way for a larger structure. The county brought architects J.H. Barrows and George O. Garnsey from Chicago to design the replacement courthouse for the Goshen site at the end of the 1860s.
The Elkhart County 4-H Fair draws in thousands of tourists every year. The fair is the second largest county fair in the United States.
Bonneyville Mill Park consists of 223 acres (0.90 km2) of rolling hills, marshes, and woodlands on the Little Elkhart River east of Bristol. The park offers hiking trails, fishing spots, shelters, and guided tours of Bonneyville Mill. The mill is still used to produce flour.
Elkhart County’s rich history is captured in Victorian limestone, in the whirr of a working gristmill, in the aroma of apple butter bubbling in copper pots. It is located at the center of the very top of the state, where horses and buggies clop along county roads, often sharing space with a gleaming new camper on its way out west.
Buggies weren’t invented in Elkhart County, but recreational vehicles were. So was the seedless watermelon, thornless rose and the ruffled gladiolus. Elkhart County made most of the musical instruments for America’s marching bands. And it is the birthplace of Alka-Seltzer, that “plop-plop, fizz-fizz” remedy famously touted by little Speedy Alka-Seltzer.
They say the measure of a community is how it was envisioned seven generations ago, and how it plans that far ahead today. The reason this county’s past and future are accessible in the present is the deliberate care that residents have taken of its wondrous assets for 185 years.
Here communities are linked by bike trails, scenic byways (the Heritage Trail), the 1913 Lincoln Highway, and two winding waterways – the St. Joseph and Elkhart rivers.
Goshen, the County Seat, has a lively vintage downtown where artisans, baristas, brewers and candy makers are flourishing. Vinyl records have an emerging marketplace, and performances are cozy affairs with national talent.
The largest city, Elkhart, has great eateries and ethnic fare, spectacular gardens and riverfronts, and an art museum that features Norman Rockwell and other American notables. A gorgeously restored Lerner Theater engages acts from Motown to Broadway.
The city of Nappanee encourages its visitors to embrace the pace of a more rural lifestyle, as does Middlebury, sharing Amish cuisine, crafts and culture. The county hosts dozens of festivals and other events from a huge county fair to harvest celebrations, and monthly downtown street parties to an annual jazz festival. And behind each is a story or two!
Another Elkhart County asset— and a major one at that—is its proximity. Elkhart’s railroad switching yard is the second largest in the nation, and major east-west highways travel directly through the county. US Highway 6 skirts the county to the south and Interstate 80/90 to the north. The four exits and entries from I-80/90 bring visitors within minutes of all there is to see and do. And with a leaner more efficient north/south highway system from the center of the state, Elkhart County is just an easy drive away.
Quilt gardens along the Heritage Trail such as this one can be enjoyed at this spring-to-fall annual attraction in the seven communities of Bristol, Elkhart, Goshen, Middlebury, Nappanee, Shipshewana and Wakarusa.
County Seat: Goshen
Year Organized: 1830
Square Miles: 463.17