The small all-volunteer group began with educational efforts aimed at highlighting the community’s history, creating informational brochures and sponsoring installation of a historical marker sharing Fox Lake’s story. To help preserve and share historic images of the lake, they partnered with The Indiana Album to sponsor a Juneteenth scan-a-thon, inviting people to bring photographs stored in family albums and attics to be digitally scanned.

The foundation has also focused on preserving Fox Lake’s built environment, hiring a professional photographer to document the community’s still-standing historic cottages and advising owners on maintaining them. The group won a $15,000 grant from the Standiford H. Cox Fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation to rehabilitate the K.T. Thompson Lodge, a gathering place for resort residents since 1968. Looking to the future, the foundation hired a professional consultant to look at expanding the historic district to encompass the entire lake and establishing a conservation district.

“We want Fox Lake to be remembered and remain standing for the next 100 years,” says Kathryn Hawkins, foundation president and third-generation resident. “It’s thrilling to receive this award because I feel like so many people are working to get places of importance on the map, so being recognized for the work we’re doing in this small piece of the world is just so flattering.”

Recruiting the next generation to care about historic places and community heritage can require outside-the-box thinking. In Muncie, children ages 9-12 sculpted building façades in clay, trained camera lenses on column capitals, and practiced building landmarks of their own as part of the Time Travelers program, a workshop series organized by the Ball State CAP Center for Historic Preservation.

For its forward-thinking curriculum encouraging students to explore their community’s history, the Time Travelers program organized by Ball State CAP Center for Historic Preservation won the Servaas Award in the youth-serving category. PHOTO: Ball State CAP Center for Historic Preservation

Through scavenger hunts and walking tours of downtown, students discovered local landmarks in a new way, learning about architectural details and taking photographs to re-create them in clay.

Back at their home base at Madjax, a maker-space located in a historic factory, students explored the building looking for clues to how it developed over time—learning how wood, brick, and stone served as building materials. They split into teams, using foam bricks in a competition to build the tallest freestanding structure capable of withstanding attack by a frisbee.

To test their new-found knowledge of architectural styles and historic details, the Time Travelers took guided tours of the Cornerstone Center for the Arts and Emily Kimbrough House and neighborhood. “I believe how a community values ‘place’ is intrinsically linked to the health of that given place,” says J.P. Hall, associate professor and leader of the program. “By encouraging students to look around and see what they encounter every day in a different light, we’re planting the seeds about the importance of architecture, design, community, and making quality places.”

As winner of the youth-serving category, the Ball State CAP Center for Historic Preservation receives $1,000, and Fox Lake Preservation Foundation receives $2,000. Both groups will receive Evansville artist John McNaughton’s original sculpture “No Doors to Lock Out the Past,” at Indiana Landmarks’ Annual Meeting on September 7.