Owen R Rader

History of Elnora, Indiana, 1885-1985 Owen R Rader Facsimile edition

Elnora, Indiana, is Daviess County's youngest town, laid out in 1885 alongside the new railroad built atop the towpath of the defunct Wabash and Erie Canal. It was a boomtown at first, but in subsequent years it struggled, its population rising and falling, barely touching the 1,000 mark. Plagued over and over by damaging floods and by fires that destroyed its downtown, this plucky rural community has kept bouncing back. Despite its setbacks, Elnora has been a beloved hometown for generations of residents. To paraphrase the great statesman Daniel Webster in a different context, it is a small town, "and yet there are those who love it." As a witness to more than two-thirds of the town's first century, fascinated by local people and their stories, Owen Rader was ideally suited to write Elnora's early history. Thoroughly researched and richly illustrated with over 100 period photographs, it stands as a classic, the only history of the town. This facsimile edition of Owen Rader's centennial history of Elnora is meant to make the out-of-print book available to a new generation of readers. It features a new foreword by Jim Vertrees, a distinguished son of Elnora, and new, comprehensive name and subject indexes to make it more accessible to family historians and others interested in the town's history.