What to see on a daytrip to Gosport, Indiana

Looking to take an Indiana road trip not far from home that offers a quiet step back in time, a small yet interesting selection of shops, a dose of local history and food ranging from the best breadsticks around to rhubarb pie made before your very eyes?

Consider Gosport.

The Owen County town is right off Ind. 67, about 15 miles southwest of Martinsville. Veer off the highway at the Family Dollar store and follow Seventh Street into the heart of Gosport.

From Bloomington, it's a 19-mile drive, taking Ind. 46 West, then County Line Road north. Travel time is about half an hour.

First stop on the T.C. Steele Historic Trail

There's a new attraction in Gosport for those with an interest in history. Seven historic stops mark the T.C. Steele Historic Trail as it winds through central Indiana and the first is this Owen County town where the American impressionist painter was born on a farm.

Visiting the birthplace of Theodore Clement Steele, born Sept. 11, 1847, means a road trip to Gosport. The town located near the banks of the White River has the same number of residents today, about 840, as it recorded in the 1870 census.

If you don't want to leave home for the Steele tour, or are seeking a preview, travel the T.C. Steele Trail virtually at: https://trail.tcsteele.org/

Traffic in the area: State Road 46 closed between Spencer, Terre Haute; paving between Ellettsville, Spencer

But if you opt for a summertime road trip, there are some other things to see and do in Gosport. Park anywhere downtown for free. Don't be surprised if you are among a handful of visitors, or even the only one.

This small town doesn't usually attract many tourists, except for the Lazy Days Festival in August, which features the famous bed race down Main Street, and the Holiday Festival in December, highlighted by the Snowball Drop and a homemade pie auction. People flock to Gosport for those events.

The Ten O'Clock Line Treaty Museum

This quaint local museum, once a church, features all sorts of Gosport-related history told with photographs, documents and memorabilia. The new exhibit housed here focuses on two locally born men who became famous in the arts: 19th-century American impressionist painter T.C. Steele and author James Alexander Thom, who died earlier this year.

The museum at 19 N. Fourth St. is open April through December, just two days a week, with limited hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Fridays and 9 a.m. until noon Saturdays. There's no admission fee. Visits at other times can be arranged by calling 812-821-3007, 812-325-4360 or 812-876-1431.

Steele is known for his paintings of Indiana landscapes, and was one of the most famous of the Indiana's Hoosier Group artists. He was born on a farm near Gosport and moved with his family to Montgomery County when he was 5.

Thom, whose historical novel "Follow the River" was on the New York Times bestseller list in 1981, also is remembered in the new exhibit. Thom was born in 1934 in his family home in Gosport, where his mother was a physician.

One of four Owen County natives in the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, Thom lived with his wife Dark Rain Thom in a cabin he constructed in eastern Owen County in the years before his death.

Pengin Cycle Werks

Housed in the town's old opera house on Main Street, this unique business sells and repairs bicycles of all kinds. Pengin Cycle Werks owner Michael Miller also has been known to fix wheelchairs, skateboards and other items with wheels.

Most days, Miller keeps watch over his wife's adjacent business, The Crazy Lady Next Door, while she's working another job. She runs the shop Friday and Saturdays. There's an entry to her store in the back of his business, and shoppers are directed there to access what people in town call "the crazy lady store." Miller also serves on on the three-member Gosport Town Council.

The Crazy Lady Next Door

Roxanne Spoo found her way to the back entrance into Lorna Miller's high-ceilinged retail shop, where customers can buy glitzy costume jewelry, dish towels, funny refrigerator magnets, candles, cards, irreverent socks, indoor lights, keychains, cool kids' toys and even the vintage kitchen stove the refrigerator magnets decorate.

"Eclectic," the Anderson resident said when asked to describe the items for sale at The Crazy Lady Next Door.

She'd been here before, nearly a lifetime ago. So had her brother, Steve Wampler, who lives in Bellevue, Washington. He accompanied her on a recent visit to Gosport.

"This used to be an old 5-and-10 store, a Woolworth's," Spoo said. Wampler, there with his wife and 14-year-old son, remembered, too.

"It seems like every time we visit, Gosport is on the verge of taking off and becoming something, but it's never happened," Susan Wampler said of the town where her husband's grandmother, Lois Wampler, lived on Main Street her entire life.

They were in Owen County for a family memorial service, and were the lone visitors to town on a Thursday afternoon in June. Michael Miller said that's not unusual. "It can be no one on a given day," he said, "or 20 people."

SommHerr's Bakery

At 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon in June, Ailene Herr filled homemade pie shells with chunks of frozen rhubarb. Some got strawberries added in; others, cherries. She tossed in a little flour, then some sugar; there's no measuring. She smoothed water along the pie crusts' edges, then topped each with a second crust, pinching the two together in a fancy crimp. She's wearing a cotton-print apron like women wore a century ago.

"We're heading up toward 40," Herr said, not looking up from her work. The pies are made in a kitchen in the center of the store where you can watch. Two women mixed up vats of cookie dough, using ice cream scoops to plop the thick chocolate chip-studded mixture onto baking sheets.

The bakery and deli on Main Street, which opened the week of Thanksgiving in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, serves locals and attracts out of towners as well.

Nate's Candy Jar

This family business in Gosport started out small in 2009, 10 years after the Rice family raised $3,000 for new playground equipment at the local elementary school by selling homemade caramels.

From that simple school-fundraiser emerged Nate's Candy Jar, a thriving, small-town family business that expanded to making fudge that's packaged in a cup with a plastic spoon.

Alyssa Rice opened the candy store so kids would have a place to go. She combined the first letters in the names of her family to spell out the name: son Nathan, then Alyssa, then husband Tom, and then Evan, their other son. Nate.

The store also sells the caramels that got them started, and features Fido's Fudge, dog biscuits dipped in fudge. Look for the red-and-white-striped awning on Main Street.

C.J.'s Pizza

The best breadsticks around? You will find them at C.J.'s Pizza. Really. The pizza is pretty good, and there's a self-serve taproom featuring Indiana-brewed beers. Outdoor seating is available.

Wait, there's more

Other downtown sites include Gosport Tavern, Main Street Hair salon, inside an old bank, and the town park.

Gosport also has the kind of businesses and amenities that anchor and help sustain a small town: an elementary school, volunteer fire station, dental clinic, doctor's office, grocery, bank, home-cooking diner, laundromat, auto parts retailer, community center, funeral home, and several churches.

This isn't a tourist destination. It's a town 800 people call home, where the folks eating at Millie McGee's Diner all know each other.

Speaking of Millie McGee's, stop in between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. The food is homemade and traditional southern Indiana. On June 1, the lunch specials were ham and beans with fried potatoes and cornbread or meatloaf with bread and mashed potatoes covered with gravy.

Contact Herald-Times reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Gosport, population 800, is home to several unique businesses