Listen While You Walk
Press play and follow along. The episode covers every stop on this tour.
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Tour Route
8 stops through downtown Wabash. Tap a marker for details.
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The Stops
Follow the route from start to finish.
Alley Walk Sign
47 W Market Street, Wabash, IN 46992
Your tour begins here, across from the Tremont Parking Lot and Veteran's Plaza. This is the heart of downtown Wabash, where on March 31, 1880, over 10,000 spectators gathered to witness four Brush arc lights illuminate the courthouse dome — making Wabash the first electrically-lit city in the world.
Charles Brush
Inventor of the Arc Light
Head west on Market Street
Honeywell Center
275 W Market Street, Wabash, IN 46992
One of Indiana's most popular performing arts centers, built during WWII and dedicated in 1952. Named for Mark C. Honeywell, the Wabash native whose heating innovations grew into a global empire. The center has drawn performers from Willie Nelson to the Beach Boys.
Mark C. Honeywell
Heating Pioneer & Industrialist
Circle back east on Market Street, turn right on Miami Street
Modoc's Market & Charley Creek Inn
Miami Street between Market & Canal, Wabash, IN
Circle back east on Market Street, then turn right on Miami Street. On your left is Modoc's Market — a general store standing where Bradley Brothers Drug Store once stood, the very shop that Modoc the elephant ransacked for peanuts in 1942. Across stands the historic Charley Creek Inn, built in 1920 as Hotel Indiana.
Modoc
The Elephant Who Took Downtown
Crystal Gayle
Country Music Legend
Turn left on Canal Street
Canal Street
Canal Street, Wabash, IN
Turn left onto Canal Street, named for the Wabash & Erie Canal — America's longest canal at roughly 460 miles, linking Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The canal transformed Wabash from a frontier settlement into a thriving town. Wabash itself was platted in 1834 on land ceded in the Treaty of Paradise Spring.
Continue to 2 W Market Street
Market & Wabash
2 W Market Street, Wabash, IN 46992
Back at Market Street, this area honors two remarkable Wabash natives. John P. Costas invented the Costas Loop that revolutionized modern telecommunications. Margie Stewart became the official U.S. Army poster girl during WWII, her image appearing on 94 million posters distributed to servicemen worldwide.
John P. Costas
Telecommunications Pioneer
Margie Stewart
Official U.S. Army Poster Girl
Turn left (north) on Wabash Street
Wabash Street
Wabash Street, Wabash, IN
Head north on Wabash Street. This stretch honors Loren M. Berry, born right here in Wabash in 1888. Berry became 'Mr. Yellow Pages,' founding L.M. Berry and Company and building it into a publishing empire that handled one out of every four telephone directories in America.
Loren M. Berry
Mr. Yellow Pages
Turn right on Market Street, continue east to Paradise Spring
Paradise Spring Historical Park
351 E Market Street, Wabash, IN 46992
Turn right on Market Street and walk east to Paradise Spring, known to the Miami and Potawatomi peoples as Ta Kincomaong — 'Running Water Place.' On October 26, 1826, 37 tribal leaders met 14 U.S. government representatives here to sign the Treaty of Paradise Spring, ceding land in northern Indiana and southern Michigan.
Head back west on Market Street to the museum
Wabash County Museum
36 E Market Street, Wabash, IN 46992
Your tour ends at the Wabash County Museum, home to the Crystal Gayle Theater and exhibits preserving the rich history of this remarkable small city. The museum houses one of the original 1880 Brush arc lights. Inside, you'll find the stories of Howard A. Howe, whose polio research at Johns Hopkins helped develop the vaccine that saved millions.
Howard A. Howe
Polio Vaccine Researcher
Crystal Gayle
Country Music Legend
The People of Wabash
8 remarkable lives connected to Wabash, Indiana.
Charles Brush
1849 - 1929
Inventor of the Arc Light
Cleveland inventor who developed the first commercially successful arc lighting system. His lights were mounted on the Wabash courthouse dome on March 31, 1880, making Wabash the first electrically-lit city in the world.
Photo: DPLA / Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
Mark C. Honeywell
1874 - 1964
Heating Pioneer & Industrialist
Born and raised in Wabash, Honeywell developed the hot water home heating system and founded the Honeywell Heating Specialty Company in 1906. His company merged to become Minneapolis-Honeywell, now one of the world's largest conglomerates.
Crystal Gayle
Born 1951
Country Music Legend
Born Brenda Gail Webb in Kentucky, Crystal Gayle's family moved to Wabash when she was four. Sister of Loretta Lynn, she became the first female country artist to achieve platinum status. Her hit 'Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue' topped charts worldwide.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5
Modoc
Active 1942
The Elephant Who Took Downtown
On November 11, 1942, Modoc the circus elephant bolted from a fundraiser at Wabash High School, smashed through the front door of Bradley Brothers Drug Store searching for peanuts, and led a five-day chase across two counties. She lost 800 pounds before her capture.
John P. Costas
1923 - 2008
Telecommunications Pioneer
Wabash-born electrical engineer who studied at Purdue and MIT. He invented the Costas Loop, a modified phase-locked loop that had a profound effect on modern digital communications, and developed Costas Arrays for signal processing.
Margie Stewart
1919 - 2012
Official U.S. Army Poster Girl
The official poster girl of the United States Army during WWII. Her image appeared on 12 different posters with 94 million copies distributed. Unlike glamorous pinups, her wholesome girl-next-door image appeared in soldiers' paychecks nationwide.
Photo: National Archives (NARA), Public Domain
Howard A. Howe
1901 - 1976
Polio Vaccine Researcher
Wabash native who became a physician at Johns Hopkins. With David Bodian and Isabel Morgan, he first identified the three poliovirus serotypes and successfully inoculated children just before Jonas Salk's trials, laying the groundwork for the polio vaccine.
Loren M. Berry
1888 - 1980
Mr. Yellow Pages
Born in Wabash, Berry founded L.M. Berry and Company in 1910, becoming one of the foremost telephone directory publishers in America. His company handled one out of every four telephone directories nationwide, with sales approaching $1 billion by 1986.
Before You Go
Starting Point
Alley Walk sign at 47 W Market Street, across from the Tremont Parking Lot
Distance & Terrain
~1.7 miles, flat sidewalks, easy to moderate distance
Time
~35 min walking + 35 min audio at a relaxed pace
Parking
Free parking at Tremont Lot / Veteran's Plaza
Best Time
During daylight hours. Downtown shops are open most weekdays.
What to Bring
Headphones or earbuds and a charged phone