Hesston Steam Museum
Indiana
Just off the Indiana Dunes, a little-known gem runs on steam power from another century. The Hesston Steam Museum began in nineteen fifty-seven when a handful of local enthusiasts, calling themselves the La Porte County Threshermen, pooled money to buy twenty-two acres and cleared a stand of thorn apple trees to hold their first reunion. They dammed Mud Creek to form Duck Lake, giving their traction engines a reliable water source.
A sawmill went up in fifty-nine, an electric plant in sixty-one. Then Chicago book publisher Elliott Donnelley caught wind of what they were building and began underwriting land purchases until the site reached one hundred fifty-five acres. A dual-gauge railroad followed, running trains on both two-foot and three-foot track.
The La Porte County Historical Steam Society was formally chartered in nineteen sixty-eight. Today it is one of the largest operating steam museums in the country, running live locomotives every summer weekend just as they did in their working days.
