The Ghost Town of Bonnell, Indiana

Hi, I'm Jim Scott, and welcome to another edition of History in Your Own Backyard. Now don't be afraid, but I'm going to take us on a tour of a ghost town. This is Dearborn County, Indiana. It's Bonnell, well it was Bonnell, Indiana, but it's a ghost town now. You ready? Here we go. The village of Bonnell began as a railroad town in the late 1800s, and Bonnell, Indiana was originally named Kennedy. Now that was the name of a post office that was established here November 5th, 1885. The post office, which lasted until 1929, was named after a railroad official for the line that ran through town. Later years, the town changed names to Bonnell, a person who also happened to be a railroad official. In the late 1800s, many trains for the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad passed through the town of Bonnell. At one time, the town was home to several stores, stockyards, a train depot, a sawmill, and of course a church. The children in the area attended the Turkey Point Schoolhouse that sat just over the ridge and still stands to this day on Turkey Point Road. The road is now a dead end, but it originally came down over the hillside into the town of Bonnell. A pump house to supply water for the steam engines was located about a half mile east of Bonnell at the foot of Bertselbach Road. Mount Hope Church was established here in 1896 by a Reverend Jones with a congregation meeting in the local schoolhouse. There was a bridge, it was a steel through truss bridge, and it was built in Bonnell in 1914. It spanned the west fork of Tanner's Creek. That bridge was demolished in the 1990s and replaced with a current structure. As passenger trains slowly went away, so did the town of Bonnell. Today, only two houses and the shell of a third remain in Bonnell. Freight trains still pass through daily on their way from Cincinnati to the Honda plant in Greensburg, Indiana, but there's no reason for the trains to stop nowadays. Very little remains of the town, the church, post office, train depot and the stores, they've all been removed from what was once a very prosperous community tucked down in a valley hidden from the outside world. You could say that Bonnell is now a ghost town. Well thanks for watching. I'm Jim Scott and you've just watched another edition of History in Your Own Backyard. Hope you enjoyed the trip to Bonnell, Indiana, at least where it used to be. So don't forget, travel slowly and stop often.