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Virtual Exhibit Tour

Enter the galleries to explore a virtual tour of the Monroe County History Center’s spring exhibitions in 2020. Thanks to the Indiana University Advanced Visualization Lab in UITS Research Technologies for providing resources for this project.

Hoosier-in-Residence: T.C. Steele’s Franklin Hall Studio

Born and raised a Hoosier, T. C. Steele brought the beauty of the Indiana landscape to a developing modern world. For the last four years of his life, T. C. and Selma Steele made Bloomington their home from fall to spring, spending the other half at the House of Singing Winds in nearby Brown County. T. C. Steele was given a studio at the top of Franklin Hall while he served as Indiana University’s first artist-in-residence. The Monroe County History Center rebuilt that Franklin Hall studio in the fall of 2020 to demonstrate the impact T. C. and Selma Steele had on IU and Bloomington. This exhibition is supported by the IU Office of the Bicentennial and digitized by the Indiana University Advanced Visualization Lab in UITS Research Technologies. 

Lake Monroe Oral History Project

In 1986 Alice Morrison (née Mordoh), a doctoral student at the Indiana University Folklore Institute, published her dissertation entitled “Portrait of a Lost Community: A Folklife Study of the Salt Creek Valley of South Central Indiana and the Effects of Community Displacement Following Formation of the Monroe Reservoir.”

For her dissertation, Morrison collected the oral histories of past residents of Salt Creek while also exploring other fields such as local history, cultural geography, political influence, and the industrialization of agriculture. These oral histories, now housed in the Monroe County History Center Research Library, tell the stories of the people and places whose traditional ways of life were disrupted by the construction of Lake Monroe.

All the audio and research in this online exhibit comes from Morrison’s fieldwork. Due to this, some of the audio may be less clear than is desirable and some locations may have changed since the 1980s.

Exhibit created for the Monroe County History Center Research Library by Delainey Bowers and Dorothy Berry. Edited by Emily Noffke. Huge thanks to Alice Reed Morrison for the donation of her research materials and oral history recordings.

Monroe County’s Firsts: Breaking the Color Barrier

Monroe County’s Firsts: Breaking the Color Barrier celebrates the triumphs of Monroe County’s African American citizens and the vast accomplishments achieved throughout the county’s two hundred years.

The Monroe County History Center developed this digital exhibition of Breaking the Color Barrier, which can also be viewed at the History Center on a large interactive touch screen. This exhibit was made possible with funding provided by the Operation Round Up program of SCI REMC and the Wylie Foundation.

We are always updating this digital exhibit as we gather more information and photographs. If you have details to add or someone you would like to recommend for the exhibit, please let us know.

Monroe County Hall of Fame

The Monroe County Hall of Fame was established on July 4, 1976, in honor of the United States Bicentennial. Ten individuals who contributed significantly to the history of Monroe County were inducted that first year. Throughout the years the citizens of Monroe County have continued to elect more people who helped make our community special into the Hall of Fame. You can find out more information about each of the members of the Hall of Fame with this digital exhibition. The Monroe County History Center developed this digital exhibition of the Hall of Fame, which can also be viewed at the History Center on a large interactive touch screen, was made possible with funding provided by the Operation Round Up program of SCI REMC.