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Adventures of Yesteryear in Huntington County
Item 7 of 15
This is a contributing entry for Adventures of Yesteryear in Huntington County and only appears as part of that tour.Learn More.
You wouldn't believe it looking around the corner of 300 W and 8000 N now, but in the mid-1800s this was a forested wilderness. Near this very intersection a Wills Stallsmith and his horse were chased home by a pack of wolves.

The area around this intersection was the scene of a wolf chase in the mid-1800s.

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According to the 1849 Indiana Gazetteer Huntington “with the exception of a few small prairie, the whole county was originally a dense forest.” This meant that the county was full of wildlife associated with a mid-latitude forest. Among the top predators were the gray and red wolves (Canis lupus and Canis rufus). As European Americans terraformed the area, cutting down trees, draining swamps, and doing other things to make the land farmable, there were inevitably contacts between wolves and humans.

According to the 1984 Centennial Map, one such incident took place near here. The following was related in a 1928 article where F.S. Bash interviewed Mrs. Farmer, daughter of Henry Shutt, Sr., an early settler:

“There used to be plenty of wolves in some localities. My cousin, William Stallsmith, told of coming along the road on horseback one night and right about where the Will Steel farm is now located, a dozen wolves started after him. They frightened his horse and it ran at top speed for several miles. The wolves gave up the chase and disappeared. But if that would have thrown him off the horse, the wolves would have torn him to pieces.”

By 1908, wolves had been eradicated from all of Indiana.

  1. The Indiana Gazetteer, or Topographical Dictionary of the State of Indiana. 3rd Edition. 1849. Indianapolis: E. Chamberlain, p252
  2. Historical Sketch of Huntington County, Indiana. 1877. Board of County Commissioners.
  3. Map of Huntington County, Indiana: 1834 – 1984. 1984. Huntington County Historical Society.
  4. The Bash Chronicles, by F. S. Bash. Stories from the early settlers collected by F. S. Bash from 1922-1931 and published in the Huntington Herald. 2016. Jean Gernand. Fort Wayne: Wayne Press, 594.
  5. https://www.in.gov/dnr/fish-and-wildlife/wildlife-resources/animals/gray-wolf Accessed 25 May 2021
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