Remember When

In Late 1930s and Years Before and After World War II, Patton Park Lake was Fun Place to Go in the Summer Time

By Elmer Reynolds

As Martinsville’s Jimmy Nash City Park prepares for an expected crowd of between five and then thousand people for our 52 annual Fireworks program this coming Wednesday evening…. many “oldtimers” in our midst an travel down onto the backroads of our memory.and remember what summertime an the Fourth of July was like in those long ago days of the 1930’s and 40’s.

Long before television, computer video games of the internet age invaded our world…..life in Morgan County during those years before, during and shortly after World War II was considerably more serene…and certainly less complicated.

In the mid-1930’s, as Martinsville and Morgan County struggled along with the rest of the country to pull itself out of “The Great Depression,” one of our town’s leading businessmen, Wm. J. Patton 9whose family owned the Old Hickory Furniture Co.) mad a philanthropic gift to the loal boys Scouts of America troops that  would have a profound beneficial impact on thousands of people in Central Indiana.

Mr.Paton for years had owned some of Morgan County’s most scenic, somewhat primitive..but always beautiful land in Morgan County.  Although the Wm. J. Patton family owned hundreds of acres of timberland in Greg and Jefferson Townships, dating back to the early 1920’s, it was not until 1927 (or there abouts ) that Ralph R. Kinton Tom Cravens, Everett “Doc” Smith and Emerson Laughner (and others) began to involve local Boy Scout Troops in his rugged area west of Martinsville.

The earliest efforts by Kinton,Cravens,Smith and Laughner,etc. to construct a dam to create a lake in the early 1930’sdidn’t produce a dam that was sturdy enough to survive for long.

A few years after the first dam was build…Mr Kinton acknowledged that “he had been mistaken in his ability to create a lasting dam.”  It soon washed away.

But by 1936-1937 Mr. Patton had made arrangements to five the land to “The Bou Scouts” for their camping, fishing and boating activities.

President Roosevelt And WPA To The Rescue

About the tine the local Martinsville Lions Club began to take an interest in scouting activities and Tom Cravens, “Doc” Smith and Ralph Kinton led an effort to get the Morgan County Commissioners to apply to President Roosevelt’s’ WPA for a federal grant of money to fund a dam and lake project…primarily for the Boy Scouts.

Carl Dillon,chairman of Morgan County Board of Commissioners and County Auditor Alonzo Knight met with WPA officials sent here form Washington D.C> in 1937 to finalize the details of the Patton Lake Project.

When the WPA approved an expenditure of $80,000, our Morgan County Commissioners agreed to put up $12,000…and one of Morgan County’s most exciting project of that era was ready to get under way in the fall-winter of 1937.

Plans called for “lodge building, bathhouse, boat landing and pier, a shelter house and ovens,safety posts, and guard rails along the road leading to the lake.”

Lodge

A Scouting Retreat Became Our Finest Recreation Area

In the months that followed the 1937-1938 WPA project…Mr. Patton’s original gift to the Boy Scouts crew in to one of the most beautiful recreation areas in Central Indiana of that period.

The rustic beauty of the western Morgan County hills in which the 154 acre Patton Lake was nestled became the most popular summer home site for many Martinsville families.

By July 4th, 1938, the local Lions Club was ready to dedicate the lake in a really bang-up fashion.  The Independence Day 1938 all-day program climaxed by a big “Fireworks Display”.