Key Principle
Elkinsville residents were not passive recipients of displacement. Two decades after the Lake Monroe acquisition, when a proposed 32,500-acre Hoosier National Forest wilderness study threatened to repeat the same displacement — this time absorbing approximately 40 homes and 5,000 acres of private land — organized community resistance succeeded. Bill Miller's eight-year CCNRA campaign (Citizens Concerned about the Nebo Ridge Area) produced the Deam Wilderness, which took zero homes and zero private property. The contrast between this success and the failure to resist Monroe Reservoir reveals what conditions make citizen resistance viable.
Why This Matters
The Monroe Reservoir displacement unfolded with a logic its victims described as inoperable: "They didn't tell you they were going to buy the place; they said 'we're going to take some of your farm'. That's the way they do, you know." Ed Wilkerson did not fight: "I didn't think there was any use. They'd made up their minds." The language of individual powerlessness is pervasive in the Monroe accounts. The CCNRA campaign shows what was different when conditions permitted resistance: advance notice, a defined legal and regulatory arena, political allies, and a community not yet fully dispersed.
Bill Miller also fought a decade-long telephone service denial by Smithville Telephone Company, which claimed it could not serve Elkinsville without crossing Indiana Bell's regulated territory. After five years of rebuffs and two months of weekly visits to the Indiana Public Service Commission, Miller threatened to picket Smithville with his wife and two small children and take the story to television. Within 48 hours, Mr. Draper ceded the territory to Bell Telephone. Eight households received service — including the Wilkerson household, where Alice Wilkerson's heart condition made telephone access medically urgent. These two campaigns together constitute the book's model of effective civic resistance.
Good Examples
CCNRA: Eight years to zero private property taken. The proposed Nebo Ridge wilderness study ran from Story to Crooked Creek to Houston to Maumee to SR 446 — a 32,500-acre area that residents experienced as "basically what the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the State of Indiana did when they decided to build Lake Monroe... only it was worse... that was immediate!" Miller formed CCNRA, declined the $50,000 estimate from the Ice Miller law firm, organized allies including Senator Lugar, Congressman Hamilton, Brown County Commissioners and Council, and State Rep. Bob Hayes. Over eight years, the outcome was redirected into the Deam Wilderness centered at Four Corners fire tower, with no homes taken and no private acres absorbed. (Chapter: Family Stories — Miller)
Raleigh Deckard saves Deckard Cemetery. Raleigh Deckard persuaded the Corps of Engineers to reroute a planned road down the ridge rather than paving over Deckard Cemetery. He enlisted brother Tom Deckard, brother-in-law Claude Mercer, and nephew Ross Deckard to make the case. "Dad was always able to talk people into helping him." The cemetery survived; the road was rerouted. Individual advocacy, not organized campaign, was sufficient here — but the target was one road, not 32,500 acres. (Chapter: Family Stories — Deckard)
Telephone advocacy: Tactical escalation. Miller spent two months visiting the Public Service Commission every Wednesday, refused a $10,000 cost-sharing demand on principle ("I lived on a public road... we had a right to public utilities"), and threatened media-visible picketing. The threat of public embarrassment resolved a decade of bureaucratic inertia in 48 hours. (Chapter: Family Stories — Miller)
Counterpoints
The Monroe Reservoir acquisition was not resisted. By the time the Corps moved in 1959–1964, the community had already lost its post office (1941), its school (1958), and most of its young men to industrial employment. Dispersal had stripped the community of the organizational capacity that the CCNRA campaign later demonstrated. Timing and population density were decisive. (Chapter: Introduction; A Brief History)
Ed Wilkerson's non-resistance was rational given context. "I didn't think there was any use. They'd made up their minds." The Corps had already bought surrounding properties; the social infrastructure for organizing collective opposition had dissolved. Individual rationality and collective action failure operated simultaneously. (Chapter: Family Stories — Wilkerson)
Compensation was provided but never evaluated as adequate. The book frames all acquisitions as coercive regardless of price paid. The school-church was bought for $5,000 and later sold back for $13,700.50 — suggesting the original price did not capture value. But the deeper harm (loss of kinship geography, experiential freedom, generational continuity) had no monetary remedy. Resistance to the CCNRA proposal succeeded in protecting property rights; it could not have restored what Monroe Reservoir destroyed. (Chapter: Introduction; Family Stories — Wilkerson)
Key Quotes
"Basically what the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the State of Indiana did when they decided to build Lake Monroe... only it was worse... that was immediate!" — Bill Miller on the Nebo Ridge wilderness proposal, Chapter: Family Stories — Miller
"They didn't tell you they were going to buy the place; they said 'we're going to take some of your farm'. That's the way they do, you know." — Ed Wilkerson, Chapter: Family Stories — Wilkerson
"I lived on a public road... we had a right to public utilities." — Bill Miller, Chapter: Family Stories — Miller
"I didn't think there was any use. They'd made up their minds." — Ed Wilkerson on not resisting the Corps, Chapter: Family Stories — Wilkerson
Rules of Thumb
- Successful resistance requires advance notice, a defined legal or regulatory arena, and a community not yet fully dispersed — all three conditions were present for CCNRA and absent for Monroe Reservoir.
- Tactical escalation (threatening picketing, media exposure) can break bureaucratic inertia that years of polite petition cannot; Miller's telephone fight resolved in 48 hours after the threat was made credible.
- Individual advocacy can succeed on narrow, concrete targets (one road rerouted, one cemetery saved) even when organized campaigns are impractical — Raleigh Deckard's cemetery success required only four people.
- The difference between coercion and displacement is often a matter of timing: once a government project has political momentum and surrounding properties have been acquired, individual resistance becomes rational to abandon.
Related References
- Freedom as the Defining Loss — What the CCNRA campaign protected was the material substrate of the experiential freedom residents describe; it was a partial success where Monroe Reservoir was a total failure
- The Cemetery and Physical Memory Anchors — Raleigh Deckard's cemetery advocacy is the clearest single instance of successful individual resistance against federal infrastructure
- Folk Life: Medicine, Craft, and Oral Tradition — Infrastructure denial (telephone service) was the systemic backdrop against which both folk resilience and organized resistance operated