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Tourists frequently stop to have their picture taken with Brown County’s timeless treasure. I don’t know if there is any truth to the belief that if one kisses the stone figure good things will happen. It wouldn’t hurt to try!
Stone Head’s Geologic History
The House at Stone Head is located at the confluence of two ancient rivers formed from the melt-waters of the Wisconsin Glacier. Ten thousand years ago cyclical climatic changes caused a warming of the earth’s atmosphere. For the next several thousand years the glacier retreated to it’s present day location in
The middle fork of Salt Creek flows in an east-west direction, blessing the valley with an abundance of warm light as the sun traverses the sky. One interesting fact of valleys that run East-West can be seen in the adjacent ridges. The southern ridge is steeper than the northern ridge. This is because the tilt of the earth as it orbits the sun directs the rays of energy to come from the south to the north. Thus, the ground on the south ridge is in shadow more than the North ridge and stays frozen for longer periods of time. More freeze- thaw cycles take place on the sun drenched southern facing slope of the north ridge, resulting in more erosion and, over time, a more gradual gradient.
Never let a day go by without learning something.
In the early days of Brown County local residents had to comply with a decree that all able-bodied males work six days a year on public roads or waterways. Henry Cross, a farmer and part-time tombstone carver, was asked to carve three stone direction markers in 1851 in lieu of working the roads. Henry chiseled the figure out of a block of sandstone quarried from the streambed behind his house on Poplar Grove Rd, one mile east of here. The front of the marker points 17 miles east to Columbus and 27 miles west to Fairfax, a town that existed before Salt Creek was damned in the 1960’s to create Monroe Reservoir. The figure’s left side points 43 miles north to Indianapolis and 28 miles to Sparkesferie. It is believed this referred to a ferry service that ran on the Muscatatuck River between points not far from present day Sparksville.
The house located at Stone Head has seen many changes both in structure and inhabitants. Its endurance since 1851 has created it's charming value, made possible by those occupants who lived and dreamed within it's walls.
The stone landmark you see here today is the last fully intact one of the three remaining. In the 1950’s a fragment of another carved head was found on the former property of artist, Kenneth Reeves, three miles from here on Christianburg Road. This fragment, depicting a hand and parts of the words “Indianapolis” and “Sparksferry (a different spelling than the one here), is now on display in the Brown County Historical Museum.
So who was the man with the seemingly unflattering “Shemp-like” haircut depicted in the famous carving? Initially I suspected it to perhaps be a likeness of the U.S. President from 1837-1841, Martin Van Buren, who bears the name of this township. A photo of Martin Van Buren shows him wearing the same style “mutton chop” sideburns that must have been fashionable in his day. However, after further investigation I discovered the monument's likeness to be that of former township road supervisor at the time, George Summa.
Stone Head’s place in Brown County resident’s hearts earned him a spot on the map. Though technically never a town, the area named after this historic marker claimed a grocery store and the only flourmill in Brown County (whose foundation and hand-chiseled quarried stones can be viewed today alongside Pleasant Creek at the back of this property).
as the house was being built. The cabin is visible in an old photograph of "The Ford at Stone Head". The present-day house is located just out of view on the left side of the photograph. The cabin eventually fell into the creek and only an abandoned stone-lined well remains today. Columbus resident, Karen Arnold, informed me that it was her husband's great-greatgrandfather who built the house in 1891 for his daughter and her husband. In 1981, the dwelling was entered with the National Registry of Historical Places as The Thomas A. Hendricks House. The carved stone marker in front of the house was awarded a seperate listing.
The historic foundation to the once flourishing Stone Head Flour Mill lies adjacent to the hiking trail head. The flour sack viewed was found by local resident, Jim Gredy, in the attic of his Grandmother. This digitized photograph of the original sack now hangs in the display room at Crouch's Market.
The Van Buren Township census of 1870 lists Samuel Fulks as a Mill Wright. The Brown County Democrat, issued Dec.17, 1914, stated that the flour, saw, and planning mill at Stone Head, owned by Willard Fulks (son of Samuel Fulks) and Joseph Gillaspy, was destroyed by a fire the night of Dec.14, 1914. The mill was rebuilt. In 1920, Willard Fulks sold his interest in the milling operation to Alva Wheeler.
