Lake Stansbury, Quigly's Pond and other forgotten places

It's really difficult for us today to imagine what our downtown looked like before we were here.  The natural inclination is to believe that we would probably have no trouble identifying where we were if we were suddenly dropped into the center of downtown a hundred years ago...or much farther back in 1835.   What did it look like when William Digby arrived?  Some, maybe even most of the buildings would be familiar if we found ourselves back in 1920...street names would certainly be the same....the courthouse would be recognized right away.   Fifty years earlier, less than one lifetime, would be a different story...it might take some walking around to get our bearings...a lot fewer buildings would be recognizable...there's a railroad running down the middle of 5th Street.  There is a courthouse square...but wow...that building in the middle looks a lot different than we are used to seeing. Good heavens...there are saloons and grocery stores in almost every block downtown.  A number of the folks we meet along the walk are speaking German.   

How about one more bump back in time...let's take a look at downtown around 10 years after it was first laid out.  If asked I bet most of you would agree that downtown Lafayette is mostly flat, and today a drive down Main street from about 11th to the river would seem to verify that belief.  The truth is, that at the time Lafayette was first laid out on paper, and for more than the first decade of existence, downtown wasn't the wide-open flat space we know today. There were hills and even a small lake covering a portion of the original townsite. That downtown area would best be described as slightly rolling, and clearly sloped toward the Wabash.    

One of the best, if not the best descriptions of old Lafayette were written by Sanford Cox who was a very early settler in Lafayette arriving here before 1830.  Some 30 years later Cox published many of his memories of his adopted hometown.  One of the most astonishing things he remembered was our very own Lake Stansbury.  Yes, we had a lake downtown.  A body of water that was more or less permanent but grew or shrank with the seasons would have looked quite similar to the photo above. The true nature of that body of water would probably be better described as a pond, or marsh, rather than a lake which is usually a deeper body of water than a pond. What it lacked in depth it made up in surface area.  Cox described it covering ground from 6th and Brown streets to the southwest reaching Third and South during the wet season.  An area of several acres and blocking the routes of several streets.   It was a popular skating area during the winter. Finally, about 1839 the town board voted to drain and fill the "lake".   

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Lake Stansbury is that the demise of the lake was intimately tied to the birth of the Pearl River according to Cox. Lets allow Sanford Cox himself to explain.  During the 1860's and '70s Cox published several newspaper articles about the history of Lafayette as he remembered it. One such collection was published in a book called "Old Settlers" Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wabash Valley which he published in 1860.  His Newspaper articles came later.  On November 15, 1871 Cox said this:   "If one of the early settlers of Lafayette that had moved away 30 or 40 years ago were to read the newspaper accounts of the improvements on Pearl River and the frequent inundations of that stream that occurred within the last 8 or 10 years he would be puzzled to know what portion of the town the raging river poured"    He would recollect the Spring Branch, just large enough to swim a duck that ran along near Samples Tan Yard at the south extremity of the village: and Lake Stansberry in the northeastern portion of the village"  "but our long-absent settler would not have the slightest remembrance of Pearl River"   Cox went on to explain that improvements of the streets and alleys, along with some extra effort by the town board in 1839 drained the little lake and where kids once skated during the winter was then covered with homes, churches, hotels and business blocks.  "Caleb Scudder, (first male child born in Lafayette) and his juvenile companions used to do some of their best skating where Trinity Church now stands"   

Now for the connection between Lake Stansbury and Pearl River:  Cox explains that the same cause that drained the lake created Pearl River.  Water always seeks a lower elevation, always.  Before the forest was cleared and "improvements" made....streets and lots graded, buildings built, Canals and railroads built...before that, all of that surface water (rainwater that wasn't absorbed) drained toward the river from the hills east and south of downtown....some of that water never made it all the way to the river...instead of ending up in pools such as Lake Stansberry and other wet places scattered here and there and then being slowly absorbed.  Another location that collected a lot of surface water was known as Quigly's pond located where St. Elizabeth Hospital was later built.  The building of the Wabash Railroad, diagonally through town had a major effect on water descending the hills east of town...forcing excess water to turn north to around Greenbush where it finally got over or under the railroad embankment and from there it wound around, ending up in Quigly's pond.  The pond had an outlet where excess water flowed generally southwest to about 8th and Main.   This was not a steady stream like a creek or river...it was surface water running toward the river from the high ground east and northeast of town during and after rainy or stormy weather.  The more that streets got graded with stone gutters and brick paving the less water was absorbed along the way, instead that water just ran down the street seeking lower ground.  There seems to be no one, not even Cox who can explain how the name Pearl River came about.  One guess is that 7th St. North of Main street was originally named Pearl Street, and that was the location where much of the flood waters ended up on their way to the river.  Around 1870 the city built a storm sewer line from Main street where the Pearl crossed to a point on South 5th, south of Alabama where waters of the Pearl joined the waters of the Spring Branch stream westward to the river.  

That storm sewer solved periodic flash flooding that had plagued parts of the downtown area as more and more of the surface area was covered by pavement and buildings.  It retained the name Pearl River even though it was never really a river at all.  It developed a strong and somewhat mysterious local mythology over the years.   Most or at least many portions of that original brick sewer have been replaced and rerouted with stronger and longer lasting material.