On Dec. 28, 1985, the Maxinkuckee Village lost one of the last vestiges of its formerly active business community, the Manor Market at the northeast corner of East Shore Drive and 18B Road, to fire. The market, known in the 1930s as Van’s, changed its name to R & J circa 1947. Apartments were also […]
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At least as far back as the 1950s — if not earlier — Santa Claus helped kick off the Christmas season each December by arriving in town on a Culver fire truck, often greeting children at the annual children’s Christmas party at the station afterwards.
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Culver Military Academy’s Trunk Room began its life as theTabernacle for the chautauqua hotel Henry Harrison Culver built at the site of today’s Main Barracks, for the 1889 chautauqua season (famous evangelist T. Dewitt Talmage spoke there). It became the Culver Military Academy gymnasium when the school was started in 1894, and the school’s dining […]
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Then known as the Gignilliat cottage — for Culver Military Acaemy superintendent L.R. Gignilliat — and later as the Superintendent’s Home, all but the first floor of this late 19th century structure burned in a March 25, 1918 fire, though there was time to save most of the furniture and belongings from the flames. The […]
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ABOVE: In 1941, the garage and tenant residence at the Marmon cottage, at 1100 East Shore Drive on Lake Maxinkuckee, burned to the ground. The structure likely dated to the 1880s, when Daniel and Elizabeth Marmon arrived here and established the cottage, today occupied by the Greenleaf descendants of the Marmons. […]
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On Oct. 21, 1978, Lake Shore Lanes bowling alley and the coffee shop accompanying, located at 620 Lake Shore Drive, burned to the ground in a spectacular fire. Dating back to 1953, Jim and Mary Dewitt had owned the bowling alley, which was sold in 1977 to Don and Juliemae Neidlinger. The fire call came […]
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In 1906, the first commercial ice house operation on Lake Maxinkuckee, opened in the early 1880s by Sterling Holt of the Indianapolis Ice Co., burned to the ground. These shots were taken from across the lake at Culver Military Academy by a cadet. The ice house was located in the depression near South Street and […]
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The entire upper floor of the Culver hardware store at 120 South Main Street was lost in a three-hour, $60,000, April, 1957 blaze, which The Culver Citizen describes as interrupting the “traditional” Easter Sunday noon parade. Residing in the apartment at the time was the Chatman family, one of several making up Culver’s African-American community […]
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The Culver Fire Department, which formed in Jan., 1903, began keeping hand-written records which continued through the century. Pictured here is the very first book in its entirety. Read more about the formation of the department and its early minutes here.
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The fire which claimed the Ferrier Lumber Company on the north side of East Jefferson Street in Culver was spotted around 4:30 a.m. April 21, 1923. Fire departments from Knox, Plymouth, and Logansport assisted, and Culver’s inadequate water supply forced firemen to pump water from nearby Lake Maxinkuckee. Efforts were concentrated on saving the surrounding […]
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