Lake Village, IN

Lake Village is a Newton County CDP in Lake Township, laid out in 1876 near what settlers called Beaver Lake. The first settlement drew hunters and fishermen, but the place did not grow much until the railroad arrived in 1905. A post office has operated here since the founding year, and State Road 10 still gives the community a through-road identity; Phil's Truck Stop became a village post-office site in 2014. It is a small place, but its map has always been about movement—lake, rail, and road.

ATTRSteve Shook from Moscow, Idaho, USA / CC BY 2.0

Lake Village's most personal institution is the Lake Village Memorial Township Library. The local book club formed it in 1944 as a memorial to World War II soldiers, collecting 200 books and more than $200; families paid a dollar a year until Indiana approved it as a free township library in 1946. Residents later built the library themselves, moved it into a newer building in 2006, and kept a Lake Township Room with old Villager newspapers, local-history holdings, and information about Jennie Conrad and Native artifacts. North Newton School Corporation serves the school map. The local scoop is a railroad town whose library began as a community memorial and never stopped carrying the place's memory.