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McCormick's Creek: Where It All Began...Sort Of

By Becca Costello

Posted June 19, 2016

Falls at McCormick's Creek State Park.

For my first ever trip to an Indiana state park, I chose the obvious starting point: McCormick's Creek State Park, the very first state park in Indiana, opened in 1916.

But McCormick's Creek wasn't supposed to be the first state park; that honor should have gone to Turkey Run.

Richard Lieber, often called the father of the Indiana state parks, was planning the preservation of some land in Parke County. But issues with buying the land caused some delays, and Lieber and associates managed to buy and prepare a property in Owen County first.

The park is named after John McCormick, who homesteaded nearly 100 acres along the canyon by the waterfalls.

McCormick's Creek State Park opened on July 4, 1916 with just over 350 acres. The park is now close to 2,000 acres and also includes Canyon Inn, a building that used to be a sanitarium.

My first trip to an Indiana State Park

It was an event-filled day for us! We hiked up to the falls, on one of the most crowded trails at the park. Lots of families with kids came to play in the cool water and beneath the falls.

We checked out the nature center and helped one of the naturalists fill the bird feeders. He dumped some feed on the window sill so that when we went back into the glass-enclosed room, we could watch the birds, squirrels and chipmunks eating right up next to the window.

A speaker system plays the bird sounds and our naturalist could identify every single one by either sight or sound alone.

Finally, we went through Wolf Cave. This was definitely the most exciting (and nerve-wracking) experience of the day.

The cave is very narrow and pitch black. It was luckily dry for us, but the naturalist told us there's as much as a foot of water in the cave sometimes.

We only had to squeeze through one little opening at the very end, but that was plenty to get my heart racing.

What I didn't see

I missed out on one of the coolest features of the park: the Old State House Quarry.

Limestone was quarried here between 1878 and 1880, and they used stone from here to build the state capitol building.

They stopped quarrying stone from here because it got too difficult to transport the stone across the White River to the railroad lines.

Centennial Fitness Challenge

I'm joining the State Parks Fitness Challenge, where I try to hike 100 miles in the state parks by November 30!

At McCormick's Creek I hiked 2.8 miles.

Happy Hiking, Hoosiers!

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