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There’s a general store, covered bridges, horse-drawn wagons, a log cabin and 30 Civil War-era buildings.
Inside historic Billie Creek Village, the mission is “to preserve, to educate, to entertain.”
But preserving this Rockville living-history village, 58 miles west of Indianapolis, won’t happen — unless somebody with a lot of money steps up to buy it.
Starting Monday, an 11-day sealed bid auction will begin for the historic property. The winner, should the bid be high enough, would get 70 acres, two covered bridges, all 30 buildings and a modern party pavilion, plus all original antiques, equipment furnishings and general store inventory.
“Everybody’s hopes and dreams is (to) find somebody interested in seeing the thing continue on,” said Jeff Doner, principal broker with Key Auctioneers, which is running the auction. “To continue to be an institution for the county, the state, a learning institution, a historical destination just like it’s been.”
But to continue, Doner estimates that the winning bid should come in at $800,000 to $1.5 million. After all, the two covered bridges alone could go for $100,000, he said.
“At that price, someone is going to get a pretty unique piece of ground, property and a lot of history,” Doner said.
It’s the combined history of the venue that could be lost.
Should no reasonable bid come in, each part of Billie Creek will be liquidated, auctioned off piece by piece. That ultimately would end what Parke County started in the mid-1960s when it bought land and created a destination for visitors.
But now it’s quiet in the village, local officials said. The broom maker is gone, and so is the pottery shop. The printing press guy in full costume isn’t at the printing shop.
The village’s website says the “2012 season has been suspended.” For months, it has been open only for special events.
The reason is all about the bottom line. Billie Creek has had financial struggles of late, Parke County Commissioner Jim Meece said.
“All of these living-history kind of places, they just aren’t making it,” he said. “They can’t find the funding.”
Billie Creek found a huge advocate in local businessman Charles Cooper, who serves as board president of the nonprofit Billie Creek Village Inc. He came in and helped the organization pay off some bond debt, Meece said.
Cooper did not return phone calls Thursday.
Meece said if nothing comes of the sealed bid auction, he would prefer not to see it sold off piecemeal. It’s a good tourist attraction for his county, even if it is seasonal, and particularly heavy during the Covered Bridge Festival each October.
“We used to have Civil War re-enactments, the biggest in Indiana,” he said. “We had WWII re-enactments. We used to have school days where hundreds of kids would come.”
But it hasn’t been bustling for a while, local officials said.
Townsfolk are divided on what should happen with Billie Creek Village, said Joe Kramer, who owns a local handyman business and The Rockville Paper online.
“The general consensus in Rockville is nobody cares,” he said. “I say nobody cares, but some people do. I do. There ought to be something done about it. It’s been an icon.”
And to have such an icon sold off all at once is unusual.
“It’s definitely rare for a historical organization to sell off its whole operations,” said Stacy Klingler, assistant director of local history services at the Indiana Historical Society. “But while it’s rare, with the economic downturn, we do see historical organizations revisiting their missions.”
Billie Creek’s future mission likely will be determined by the auction’s outcome.
Follow Star reporter Dana Hunsinger Benbow on Twitter at twitter.com/IndyStarDana. Call her at (317) 444-6012.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012209070321&gcheck=1&nclick_check=1
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