Papakeechie

Let’s go back in time to the turn of the 20th Century on Lake Wawasee:

Let me introduce some major players in today’s presentation:

Let’s begin with Charles A. Sudlow (1846 – 1915): born in England, came to America at age nineteen, married in Ohio, and went into the insurance and real estate business in Indianapolis.  About 1890, he purchased the old Markley farmhouse on the southeast shore of Lake Wawasee from John Vawter.  Sudlow descendants continue today to be influential in the lakes area.  Charles’ great granddaughter, Connie Sudlow Heckaman, and her husband ran the pier business that her parents, Johnny and Anna Sudlow, started in 1938, and Charles’ great, great grandson, John Heckaman, continues to run it today, along with serving on our museum board and the Turkey Creek Township Fire Board.

George L. Xanders (1882 – 1967) met Charles Sudlow’s son, Bill, at Howe Military Academy; often visiting him at the lake.  After graduating from college, George was in charge of construction on the Lake Papakeechie project.  His enthusiasm for the lake caused his parents to come here and buy property on Lake Wawasee.  Descendants continue to live in the area.  This is a 1908 postcard of Howe.

George Miles (1858-1914) did a tremendous amount for his Syracuse birthplace. In the span of 56 years, George worked on the B&O, returned to establish a law practice,  published the Syracuse Gazette, wrote an extensive history of the town (published in the newspaper) which is a go-to for local research, assisted in the organization of the Syracuse Power and Light Company, and developed Kale Island, building a log cabin in the 1890s which, by the way, has been moved to the WACF property there to be dedicated this summer (Sat., July 24, 2023).  Pertaining to this presentation, George Miles of Syracuse was appointed the Indiana State Commissioner of Fisheries and Game in 1911 & died while in office in Dec., 1914.

In the early 1900s, just southeast of Lake Wawasee, in what seems to be an old terminal moraine, there existed a large tract of inaccessible territory.  High hills, deep holes full of water, swamps and razorback ridges made up the landscape.  Separated by low marsh lands, six little lakes from five to twenty acres in size and from forty to one hundred feet in depth were scattered about the valley.  Those little lakes may have been at one time a single lake of some six hundred acres from which the water receded.  All around this original basin were beautiful high banks, rising into hills not far away, upward of a hundred feet above the water level of these lakes, the outlet of which is through small Jarrett’s creek into Wawasee.

In 1909, Charles A. Sudlow, founder of the Northern Indiana Improvement Co., evolved a plan of restoring this ancient lake by building a dam and embankments totaling nineteen hundred feet in length across its several openings.  Quietly he set to work taking options on more than 600 acres of land within and surrounding the valley.  The directors were a “who’s who” of the lake at the time.   Charles Sudlow would be president and treasurer; George Xanders would be Secretary and Superintendent of Construction.  Much of the following account was taken from memories written by George in 1966.

When construction started on October 1, 1909, the area running west of the present dam was such a jungle that George had to climb a tall tree to see where the workmen should begin clearing.  A large gang of men and teams worked cleaning away the brush and debris up to where the new shore line would be and constructed an earthen embankment with a cement dam that would raise the water eight feet, sufficient to flood all the lands that were the bed of the ancient lake and restore it to its former grandeur and beauty.  The clearing was finished on March 1, 1910, and the levy was closed on the west side of the cement dam.

They had missed the winter snow melt, and the lake only filled up about 3 feet.  It soon filled up with weeds and spatterdock which grew faster than they could be cut off.  It was a sorry looking lake that summer.    In the fall, Charles Sudlow left for Indianapolis thinking the new lake was a failure. In December, just as George Xanders was leaving to visit his parents, he received a letter from Mr. Sudlow telling him to “go down to Papakeechie Lake, open the gates and let the water go.”  George “disobeyed” the order, figuring he could open them in March (1911) when he planned to come back to Syracuse.

Upon his return, he found the lake full to overflowing; they had caught all the winter snows!  George telegraphed Mr. Sudlow, and he telegraphed back directions to renew all options that had expired which, as a lawyer, George could do.   Eight wells were driven around the valley producing an unceasing flow of artesian water.  When Charles Sudlow built his dam, the waters rose above the valley, making six little lakes into one, creating Lake Papakeechie; naming it after a Miami chief, a part of whose reservation it formerly was.   The IN Commissioner of Fisheries and Game agreed to seine out everything objectionable, and the next spring the new lake would be stocked with bass from a source we’ll soon learn about.

Of the company’s six hundred plus acres of land, three hundred twenty-five of it was submerged, broken by several high mounds and two extensive promontories.  Its border raises abruptly from forty to sixty feet above lake level.  The mounds are islands, and the promontories add thousands of feet of beautiful building sites to its shore line.

Charles Sudlow and his fellow investors had big plans.  Between Papakeechie and Wawasee, there are hills, nearly all level on their top, that rise fifty or sixty feet above the lakes.  On top of one of these from which the view in every direction cannot be surpassed anywhere between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains, Sudlow proposed to build a club house and near this would be constructed a splendid golf course.

As a result of the creation of Lake Papakeechie, the location of the Wawasee State Fish Hatchery had just been created.  These two aerial views show it at its height in the early 1960s.   In June, 1911, Syracuse resident George Miles, Indiana State Fish and Game Commissioner, paid a visit to the area.  A careful inspection showed it would be an ideal place to raise game fish, especially bass, to stock the lakes in this immediate vicinity, something that had not been done for many a year.

It wasn’t the first “hatchery,” so to speak, on that site. Eli Lilly wrote in Early Wawasee Days, “Early in the 19th century there was a fish weir, or trap, at the outlet of the stream (Jarret’s creek) connecting the six little lakes (Jarrett, Gans, Hooper, and the three called Hartzell) with Wawasee. It was built of split stakes driven into the bottom, and the settlers would always find fish in it—unless the Indians got there first.”  The first actual fish hatchery in Syracuse came into existence around 1905.  A broodery was built in/near a small bay adjoining the canal at Pickwick Park, between the lakes, & for 2 or 3 seasons, schools of bass fry were gathered from their beds in the lake and placed within the screened enclosure.

Between the principal Papakeechie dam and the marshy shores of Lake Wawasee was a tract of low land through which the drainage of the Papakeechie basin formerly flowed. When the dam was built, a ditch was dug through the center of this low ground – ideal for hatching ponds to be placed on each side of the ditch, receiving water from Lake Papakeechie and draining into Lake Wawasee.  Additionally, to the right and to the left were high mounds of gravel, offering the nearest possible hauling in the work of throwing up embankments.  Water supply was more than adequate: Papakeechie’s lake level is higher, its artesian wells flow consistently, and the lake drains several hundred acres of surrounding land.  Mr. Sudlow met the proposal with a generous spirit.  He gave the State the perpetual right to use the grounds so long as they were occupied by hatching ponds, the right to take from the adjoining hills any amount of gravel necessary in the construction of the embankments, and all he asked in return was a small planting of bass each year into Lake Papakeechie.

Two large hatching ponds, one on each side of the spill-way ditch, were constructed in the spring of 1912.  In 1914, with the purchase of an additional 5 acres (the land where the boat trailer parking is now), 8 more large ponds were constructed, and the original two ponds were divided into 7.

In the fall of 1914, a house was built by E.E. Miles, brother of George Miles, on the crest of the hill at the west side as a residence for the custodian and a temporary stopping place for visiting deputies or wardens.  The front lawn descends by terraces, purposely left in this manner as earth was being removed from the hillside for the construction of the embankments in the ponds.

During the 1915 season, the Wawasee Fish Hatchery had fifteen hatching ponds, each caring for fifty parent bass.  That same year, the Papakeechie project ended with the untimely death of Charles Sudlow.   Union Trust Co. of Indianapolis, as executor of the estate, then stepped in. The property remained dormant for six years, except to swallow its yearly allotment of fish.

On Friday, Sept. 23, 1921, the Northern Indiana Improvement Company sold the entire Papakeechie property to Thomas Jefferson Prickett (Tom Prickett’s grandfather) of Nappanee. He intended to continue to promote the lake as a summer resort.  Exclusive sale of the lots was turned over to J. W. Rothenberger and A. L. Sudlow, son of the late Charles Sudlow.

In December of that same year the property was sold to the recently formed Papakeechie Corporation which sub-divided the property into 50-foot wide building lots with varying depths.  Rothenberger and Sudlow continued to handle the sales.  The idea of locating a hotel on the high hill overlooking Wawasee still was being pursued.  The lake has always been and continues to be private property, even though owned by a corporation, as distinguished from the public waters of the state.  Accordingly, the lake is not open to public fishing; no motors of any kind are allowed on the lake.

The Papakeechie Protective Association (PPA) was created in 1928 as an Indiana non-profit corporation.  Made up of property owners, the Association maintains and protects Lake Papakeechie and its shores.   Matter of fact, they had a board meeting this morning.

The original dam was replaced in 2012 by a dam spillway designed to take Papakeechie’s overflow into Wawasee, and the lake’s marshy west levy was leveled and bevelled.  The west embankment is higher than the east embankment so that any overtopping will occur at the east embankment where there is less inhabited property downstream that would be subject to damage.

I invite you to explore the highways and byways of the area, especially in the off-season.  Papakeechie is a rare treasure of natural beauty and serenity in the midst of the Kosciusko County lakes region.

My fascination with the lake comes from a distant relative who owned several properties on the lake and a chance meeting with Ron and Joyce Arlene Corson at a Chautauqua event last fall (2022).  Ron has put his heart and soul into the lake as former president of the PPA for 23 years.  It’s been my pleasure to learn so much about Papakeechie from these former Wawasee School Corporation teachers and tramp around the lake with Master Gardener Joyce!

Script written by Ann Vanderford Garceau for the Syracuse-Wawasee Historical Museum based on historical research.  It is not to be used without permission from the museum.

Research sources:

Images: Syracuse-Wawasee Digital Archives; Mike Mock; Papakeechie Protective Association website & a few other websites

Research: Syracuse newspapers through 1990 on Hoosier State Chronicles; Mike Mock; the Corsons; books: Early Wawasee Days; Memoirs of George L. Xanders, Sr. (written 1966); The Wawasee State Hatchery Biennial Report of the Indiana Commissioner of Fisheries and Game (George Miles) (for years 1911 and 1912; written in 1913 & for years 1913 and 1914; written in 1915); Papakeechie Protective Association; 1923 Papakeechie Corporation brochure; 1928 Wawasee directory; The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana By BJ Griswold; pub. 1917;  Waymarking.com site