FIELD NOTES: Game Farm ~by Jim Eagleman
“T
he purpose of the State Game Reservation in Brown County is to preserve the game therein. No hunting will be allowed. It will also serve as a refuge for game hunted in other parts of the county. The overflow will scatter over the boundaries and be helpful in stocking lands adjacent.” This excerpt from a report was filed with the Indiana Department of Conservation (now the Department of Natural Resources) in a central office in Indianapolis, September 30, 1925. It designates the land as a state game reservation before Brown County State Park was established in 1929. Another term for game reservation was game farms. Statewide attempts to replenish wildlife took place on properties that over time had been abandoned due to massive timber removal and poor agricultural practices. Management on the reserve began in 1926 with the plantings of wildlife food plants.
58 Our Brown County May/June 2021
The report further states: “In order that land values be not inflated, the Department employed an agent to secure options on the various tracts selected. Although employed by the Division of Fish and Game, the agent secured many options in his own name. When all that could be secured were in his hands he recorded them and later on transferred the options to the Department. Mr. Lee Bright, a resident of Nashville was appointed land agent.” The Bright, Williamson Insurance Company in Nashville, operating since 1921 on North Jefferson Street, was Lee’s business. His clients were Brown County farmers, many destitute and living on scarred and eroded land, unwilling and unable to purchase policies. But when he approached them, this time with an offer to buy their land, they were more receptive, some anxious. In Bright’s notes, there are 18 residents with whom he negotiated. Names, property size, price per acre, and comments were recorded in his journal: Joseph Roberts 155A $12.90/A -Bought a better farm out on good road, is prospering. Allex Mullis 120A $18.35/A -Bought much better farm on Schooner and is happy. John Kritzer 73A $11.10/A -Bought small farm, 40A; died short time later. Harry Smith 80A $40/A -Put up nastiest objection of all; took his money and went to Ohio… made the remark that he would not take back the old place if it were given to him. The land that now makes up Brown County State Park, Indiana’s largest, had first experienced extensive timber removal, then short-sighted attempts at farming, and later a game farm. Initially “a total of 10,662 acres of land that was purchased with funds provided by the hunters and fishermen who buy licenses,” this statement from the 9th. annual report of the Department of Conservation, 1927. Lee Bright’s first intention was for a park to Continued on 63
