The Dusty Road Leads to Elkinsville

The Core Framework

• Elkinsville was a subsistence farming community in Brown County's Salt Creek valley, displaced in the 1960s when the federal government acquired its land for Lake Monroe reservoir
• The book argues that material poverty produced extraordinary character through farm labor, mutual aid, and shared faith — an "ethical curriculum" no school could replicate
• Three institutional pillars (general store, church, one-room school) each served multiple functions; their sequential closure narrated the community's death
• The physical community was erased, but its spirit persists through reunion gatherings (est. 1987), oral tradition, and this act of collective remembrance
• Eminent domain destroyed land, community, and youth simultaneously — the book advocates for more compassionate displacement processes

Quick Lookup

The Key Insight

"Something happens to you when you put that much of yourself into a place. Even though rationally you know that it is gone, you are forever doomed to maintain the upkeep. You never really let go." — Margaret Cross, Introduction