By Mary Giorgio
Located in rural south-central Indiana, the secluded beauty of Brown County State Park offers visitors a chance to commune with nature.
The state park, Indiana’s largest, offers a full range of recreational opportunities. It also serves as a peaceful haven for numerous indigenous plant and animal species. Despite having some of the most beautiful views in Indiana, the park’s creation was far from a certainty in the early twentieth century. Its preservation and eventual designation as a state park was a result of patience and perseverance.
Brown County was created by the Indiana State Legislature in 1836. The county was named for General Jacob Brown, a veteran of the War of 1812 and later the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. The area’s first settlers soon arrived, attempting to tame the wild landscape. Most of the area was hilly and covered in dense forest. Slowly, the settlers cleared the land for farming. Between 1840 and 1900, the majority of forested areas were cleared. Felled trees were used to produce wood for housing, furniture, and railroad ties.
Initially unaware that the removal of forested areas would result in erosion, farmers further depleted their newly acquired lands by failing to institute healthy land-use practices. Consequently, poor soil quality and worsening erosion ultimately led many farmers to abandon the area. Reforestation eventually occurred on some of the abandoned lands.
The beauty of the remaining untamed landscape inspired many visitors in the early twentieth century. In 1910, Colonel Richard Lieber, an Indianapolis native and later the first director of Indiana’s Department of Conservation, visited the region and was impressed with its majesty. Lieber supposedly told an acquaintance, “This whole county ought to be bought up so that all the people of Indiana could enjoy the beauty spot.” After 10 state parks were created during his tenure in the Department of Conservation, Lieber would later become known as the “Father of Indiana’s State Parks.”

It wasn’t until 1920, however, that serious efforts were made to preserve the natural landscape in Brown County. That year, Lee Bright, a native of nearby Nashville, Indiana, began to seriously investigate options for creating a state park in the area. Much of the county’s majestic forests had disappeared by this time, and Bright sought an avenue to preserve the remaining woodlands, while simultaneously making land available for public enjoyment. Bright hoped that a state park would bring tourists to the area and thus stimulate the local economy.
Bright immediately hit a roadblock. Indiana law didn’t allow state funds to be used for the creation of a state park. Parkland could be donated to the state, but not purchased using state funds. Exploiting a loophole in the law, Bright eventually lobbied for the creation of a game preserve. By then, Lieber had taken up his post as director of the Indiana Department of Conservation and gave his full support to the plan. In 1923, Bright was given permission to act as the state’s agent in the purchase of 7,600 acres of land for use as a game preserve.
After purchasing the vast tracts of land, the Department of Conservation announced its plans to reforest depleted acres within the game preserve’s boundaries. In 1927, approximately 4,000 additional acres were purchased and added to the preserve. An observation tower at Weed Patch Hill, one of the highest points in Indiana, was soon constructed. A man-made lake was completed in 1929.
In 1927, the Indiana State Legislature passed a law allowing county commissioners to acquire land and subsequently donate it to the state for use as a state park. Locals immediately grasped that the new law would provide them with a viable path forward in the creation of their still much-desired state park. A petition requesting that county commissioners purchase land for use as a state park gained over 200 signatures. Commissioners subsequently allocated $15,000 for the purchase of just over 1,000 acres of land adjacent to the state’s game preserve. Acreage ownership was transferred to Indiana on December 3, 1928.