Tag Archive: rural

Blue House on Whitewater Canal – Metamora – Indiana

Blue House on Whitewater Canal - Metamora - Indiana

Purchase Print

An old historic blue house on the edge of a restored section of the Whitewater Canal, in Metamora, Indiana. While the Whitewater Canal only operated as a shipping route between 1836-1965, it was maintained to provide hydraulic power for a series of water-powered mills that processed grain, cotton, and made paper. The town derives its name from the play the Last of the Wampanoags, written by John Augustus Stone in 1829.

Today the town is largely a tourist attraction that draws people to unique shops with a variety of old buildings, boat and train rides, the canal, and an old grist mill that remains on the canal.

Gray Indiana Mail Pouch Barn

Gray Indiana Mail Pouch Barn

Purchase Print

The Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn, was a product of an advertising campaign conducted by the West Virginia Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco Company (Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company), from 1891 to 1992. While barn owners were paid a small fee for the advertisements, the most valuable aspect of the arrangement was the fresh coat of paint their barns received every few years, that helped preserve the wood most barns of the time were constructed from. Most Mail Pouch barns were painted either red or black, with white and yellow writing. At the height of the advertising campaign in the 1960s, more than 20,000 barns, spread across 22 states displayed the Mail Pouch Tobacco ad.

The majority of what remains of these painted barns can be located in Indiana and Ohio.

Country Road – Shakertown – Pleasant Hill – Northern Kentucky

Country Road - Shakertown - Pleasant Hill - Northern Kentucky

Purchase Print

Country Road – Shakertown – Northern Kentucky

Pleasant Hill, Kentucky also known as Shakertown, was a Shaker (the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) religious community from 1805 to 1910. With many well-preserved buildings, the village was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

The Kentucky Shaker village was founded by three New England Shaker missionaries, John Meacham, Benjamin Seth Youngs, and Issachar Bates. They founded the community around the teachings of Mother Ann Lee who believed in celibacy. Kentucky’s Shaker community ultimately died out, in part because of their beliefs in celibacy, problems encountered during and after the Civil War, and a declining interest in their way of life by potential converts . But their legacy of hard work, and fine craftsmanship lives on at Pleasant Hill.