Fun Facts

The Elkhart County 4-H Fair, Indiana’s largest, also is the nation’s third-largest county fair. 

Elkhart’s reputation as “Band Instrument Capital of the World” dates to an 1873 fistfight leaving Elkhart resident Charles Gerard Conn with a split lip that resulted in a scar. Conn played cornet with Elkhart’s Brick Brown Band, and the scarred lip interfered with his horn playing. So he created a cushioned mouthpiece from rubber. Conn soon discovered his mouthpiece was in demand among brass instrument players. By 1875, he was making mouthpieces and also trying his hand at manufacturing band instruments. Today, C.G. Conn still produces it famous mouthpieces and is the world’s oldest continuously operating band-instrument manufacturer.

In 1884, Dr. Franklin Miles launched the Miles Medical Co. in Elkhart, which produced Alka-Seltzer and One-A-Day vitamins decades later.

As “The World’s RV Capital,” Elkhart County is home to more recreational vehicle manufacturers than anywhere else. Many such as Jayco offer fascinating factory tours.

Vernon Krider, a Hoosier schoolteacher and avid gardener created a series of landscape dioramas for Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. After the show, Krider relocated his dream gardens to Middlebury. A community park on the outskirts of town incorporates several features from the dioramas, including a miniature mill with a waterwheel, a Dutch windmill, lily pond, reflecting pool and teahouse surrounded by huge concrete toadstools. 

Elkhart is home to the Elkhart Express, a men’s semi-pro basketball team started in 2006. The team plays its home games at the Northside Middle School gym in Elkhart.

Bristol’s Bonneyville Mill, the state’s oldest continuously operating gristmill, is among the county’s most popular parks. You can watch the miller grind flour and then buy a sack to take home.

In 1890, Cosmo Buttermilk Soap Company began manufacturing bar soap in a big brick factory on Goshen’s outskirts. The Chicago-Detroit Bag Company, which later took over the building and began manufacturing cloth and paper bags, produced the tissue ribbons wrapped in foil with Hershey’s Kisses. Today, shops and crafters’ studios fill the Old Bag Factory.

Pro basketball player Shawn Kemp attended Elkhart’s Concord High School, and Lindsay Benko, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming attended Central High School in Elkhart.

Film director Howard Hawks (1896–1977) was born and raised in Goshen. Hawks’ 1941 film Sergeant York won him an Academy Award nomination for best director. His other directing credits include Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), To Have and To Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959).

Former Notre Dame and NFL quarterback Rick Mirer is a Goshen native. During his years quarterbacking Notre Dame, he often was referred to as “The Goshen Motion.” His father, Ken, led the Goshen High School football team to a state title.

In the 1930s, a little girl from Elkhart nicknamed Curly Top waved every day at the Twentieth Century Limited, the nation’s foremost luxury passenger train, which passed by her backyard at 7 a.m.  The train carried everyone from famous movie stars to businessmen, honeymooners and socialites (traveling between New York City and Los Angeles via Chicago). Soon, the train’s engineers began looking forward to Curly Top’s daily greetings, which continued—rain or shine—year after year. Eventually, even the great train’s passengers grew to know Curly Top, and some of its most famous riders tossed notes stuffed in raw potatoes from the train’s kitchen to the girl as the speeding train passed by. Curly Top, Sweetheart of the Twentieth Century Limited, eventually got a chance to ride on her beloved train, when the New York Central railroad offered her trips to Chicago and New York City. Newspapers from coast to coast reported the story.

In 2005, the Goshen-based soccer club FC Indiana became the first North American women's team ever to claim double league and cup titles by winning the Women's Premier Soccer League and the U.S. Open Cup national championships.

Screenwriter James C. Strouse is a native of Goshen and where he shot his first film, Lonesome Jim, released in 2006.  Lonesome Jim is a comic drama about a young man who comes home to the small town of Goshen, after failing to succeed in New York City.  His second film, Grace Is Gone, is scheduled for release in 2007.

The LaGrange County community of Shipshewana is a major marketplace for the area’s Amish farmers. “Shipshe,” as the locals call it, also is home to one of the Midwest’s largest and most famous flea markets, along with a lively public auction held every Tuesday and Wednesday year-round.

Famous Elkhart architect, E. Hill Turnock, built Ruthmere estate in 1908. The original owners, Mr. and Mrs. Albert R. Beardsley, were descendants of Elkhart’s founding father, Dr. Havilah Beardsley. Albert earned a fortune with Miles Laboratories, a new but growing drug company that made its home in Elkhart for generations. Albert Beardsley selected a prime riverfront site for his Elkhart showpiece home, which was named Ruthmere to honor their beloved daughter, Ruth, who died in infancy. The home is now a museum and open for tours.

The First Day of Issue and Dedication Ceremony for the U.S. Postal Service’s Commemorative Amish Quilt Stamp was held in the Round Barn Theatre at Amish Acres, Nappanee.

Plain and Fancy, the 1955 Broadway musical about Amish life and love, has been playing at Amish Acres in Nappanee since 1986. Every year, the musical entertains 300,000 at the historic Round Barn Theatre, where the stage is named for and dedicated to co-author Joseph Stein, who later penned the book that was the basis for Fiddler on the Roof.

Air Force One Pilot Captain Todd Beer of the U.S. Air Force is a native of Nappanee. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he was recruited to play basketball. Captain Beer also has flown Air Force One for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

Until 1969, Goshen police manned a small, multi-sided concrete bunker built in 1939 on the grounds of the Elkhart County courthouse as a guard post when notorious bank robbers such as John Dillinger roamed Northern Indiana.  In 1940, Dillinger was thought to be hiding out in the Bristol hills just north of Goshen.