Someone sent Jean Leising this photo on Oct. 7, showing the Whitewater Canal in Metamora with water in it. It had been dry for several weeks. Photo provided by Sen. Jean Leising
Water has returned to the Whitewater Canal in Metamora, and state Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg) has returned to her effort of securing better care for the state historic site there.
But questions remain over the management of the Whitewater Canal State Historic Site. The state agency in charge of it had announced on June 11 that it would be closing the site at the end of summer. An arrangement to secure $14 million for needed repairs had apparently not been made by a state deadline.
On Oct. 7, Leising told the News-Examiner, “I think we’ve got it far enough along that it (the Whitewater Canal site) is not going to shut down. The fight’s going to be over who’s going to run it.”
She has made efforts over the past three years to move management from the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites back to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
Dating from the 1830s, the canal originally connected Cambridge City to Lawrenceburg on the Ohio River, passing through Connersville. The Metamora portion is the only section still in use.
The Whitewater Canal State Historic Site includes the canal, a grist mill, canal locks made from quarried stone, and a wooden aqueduct carrying a creek over the canal. A popular attraction until it broke several years ago had been a canal boat replica pulled along the canal by a team of horses.
But for several weeks preceding and during the annual Canal Days festival, only dried mud marked the canal’s bed.
The place where water flows from the Whitewater River into the canal, known as the Laurel Feeder Dam, had become blocked. Repair crews were unable to access it because of a land dispute. Finally, repairs were completed in the days before the festival, Oct. 3-5, but water did not reach Metamora until Oct. 6.
Leising, whose state senate district includes Metamora, sees the situation as another reason for moving responsibility for all state historic sites back to the DNR. Leising believes the current arrangement is good for the State Museum, in Indianapolis, but not for historic sites.
“The whole thing to me has been one big mismanagement,” she said. “They do a great job at the museum but maybe they aren’t into historic sites, I don’t know.”
When the canal boat that had plied the water for years was taken out of the water for repairs, it was not properly braced and broke apart. She’s been told the boat, a major tourist attraction, will not be replaced because of cost.
The 11 state historic sites have been managed since 2011 by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. Before that, they were DNR’s responsibility.
Conditions at the site dismayed Leising when she visited in 2023. That year, she sponsored a bill to make the change in state management.
“I had seen a study that the site needed $14 million in repairs. (Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ryan) Mishler (R-Mishawaka) said he would go to work on it. The last day of the session, he told me he’d gotten $7 million but said I’d have to get $7 million to match it by July 1, 2025. I was very disgusted.”
In both the 2024 and 2025 sessions, she introduced a bill to transfer management of the Whitewater Canal site to the DNR. Both failed.
On June 11, the state museum announced that it would be closing the Metamora site after the summer season.
Then, it was announced that the project had received a pre-commitment for $7 million from the Lilly Arts and Culture Fund and that is currently under review. The July 1 deadline has been extended.
So now, Leising said, the question is who will be managing the site. With $14 million at stake, it’s essential that good management be in place, she said.
Leising chairs the General Assembly’s Interim Study Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources. On Sept. 11, that committee agreed to recommend Leising’s bill moving historic sites to the DNR. She said it would restore funding for state historic sites to the 2007 level, adjusted for inflation.
Staff kept the grist mill running during Canal Days, since water is not needed to run the grinding wheels. Visitors could get freshly ground corn meal.
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