Lee is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in
Monon Township,
White County, in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...
of
Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
.
History
The site of what is now Lee is first recorded as a station stop on the
Indianapolis, Delphi and Chicago Railroad
The Monon Railroad , also known as the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railway from 1897 to 1971, was an American railroad that operated almost entirely within the state of Indiana. The Monon was merged into the Louisville and Nashville R ...
,
a company which by late 1879 had completed its initial 40-mile stretch of railroad connecting
Rensselaer and
Delphi
Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...
.
The following year on 25 October
a post office was established at the location to serve the rural districts northwest of
Monon with Calvin Anderson as its first postmaster.
Around 1884 the railroad became known as the
Monon Route.
Lee was established in 1883 and named for John Lee, the president of the ID&C Railroad, who opened a grain market there.
Lee's location in the northwestern portion of the county
was "a rich district of drained lands, admirably adapted to live stock," and as well as a place for marketing and shipping grain it was also an important local shipping point for hay; a 1915 history notes that hundreds of tons were baled and shipped annually.
In August 1886 the location was
plat
In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...
ted under the name of Oakdale by Noble J. York, a local businessman and president of the Monon town board,
and Benjamin A. Linville, but it was generally known as Lee.
In 1949, a petition led to one of Lee's street being
vacated .
Lee's post office closed on 30 June 1933.
The line through Lee is now part of
CSX Transportation Monon Subdivision and is used by
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
. While shown on Amtrak maps, service provided on the ''
Cardinal
Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to
* Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae
***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...
'' (and previously also on the ''
Hoosier State'') does not stop at Lee.
In 2016, Helen Louise George, an 88-year resident of the area, published ''History and Reflections of Lee, Indiana'' which chronicles the history of Lee.
Geography
Lee is located at about northwest of
Monon near the intersection of County Roads 1000 North and 500 West
and on the rail line between Monon and
Rensselaer.
The surrounding farmland is drained by Slough Creek, a tributary of the
Iroquois River that flows just south of Lee in a westward direction.
Gallery
File:WhiteCounty.IN.map.1908.png, White County map, 1908
File:WhiteCounty.IN.(NW detail map).png, Monon Township map detail, 1920
File:Monon church 14.jpg, Abandoned church in Lee in 2019
References
External links
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Abandoned church at Lee(image)
{{authority control
Unincorporated communities in White County, Indiana
Unincorporated communities in Indiana