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Desecrating the Giants’ Corpse

Ben Grimes

Indiana is a state molded by glaciers. Even in the south, where the great 
ice giants could not reach, their melted waters carved the landscape. Before the 
loggers and industry barreled through, the glaciers had created a territory with 
millions of  acres of  swamp. A fourth of  the land that would be dubbed “Indiana” 
was bogs, fens, marshes, wet prairies—swamp. And the swamp would resist that 
human domination as much as a landscape can, using malaria, sinkholes, impos-
sible farming conditions, and providing no usable waterways for boats. But the 
land fell. It was drained, paved, and made to fit the new human mold. 

 In the midst of  this defiant act of  avarice emerged the preeminent Amer-
ica writer of  her time: Gene Stratton-Porter. The early 1900s were the end of  
westward expansion. Apparently, everything had been claimed. Yet 13,000 acres 
of  swamp had remained unsullied in Indiana. This was called the Limberlost and 
it was Stratton-Porter’s home, the basis for her scientific writing, and the setting 
for her most successful bestselling novels. nIndiana had somehow kept the will of  
its glacial creators alive this long, and Stratton-Porter thrived in its murky wilder-
ness. From 1895 to 1913 she lived in the swamp. Until it was gone. 

 Gene had married a man named Charles Porter, a druggist by trade, and 
an enterprising mogul by deed. It was not long before he found oil in his wife’s 
beloved Limberlost. Gene was an environmentalist, preaching against oil drill-
ing, while her husband owned and operated oil rigs in what was essentially her 
backyard. The final days of  the Limberlost were depressing for the author. She 
eventually left, when it was clear there was nothing left. How did she reconcile 
this? Was it greed? Stratton-Porter was already a wealthy woman—her books sold 
millions. Was it love for the man who exploited the land that had brought her so 
much joy and success? Hypocrite though she was, her hand in the destruction 
of  the massive swamp speaks to some aspect of  “human nature.” Whether love 
or greed or something even less noble, it seems we have an endless capacity for 
destruction. With it comes little foresight. We should fear the future much more. 

 Fort Wayne, Indiana was wracked by devastating flooding twice, once in 
1913, and again in 1982. Martial law was declared in 1913, and both times it cost 
thousands of  people their homes and did millions in damage. 1913 was the same 
year the last of  the Limberlost was drained, thus losing a massive part of  the local 
watershed and a vital part of  flood management for the city of  Fort Wayne, since 
the swamp was in the county just south of  Fort Wayne. The dead swamp’s rever-
berations were felt again in 1982 and continue to haunt the entire state. 

 Does this story mean anything to us 21st Century layfolk who have never 
sold a bestseller and never lived in a swamp? We could be living in a swamp. 
Maybe we should be living in a swamp. Maybe if  one turn-of-the-century 
celebrity held those around her to the same standards she espoused, we would be 

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living in a swamp. We can try to make it a swamp again, if  for no other reason 
than to avoid the devastating impacts of  our own hubris. It seems we are the 
great formative giants of  our own era, and what we’ve wrought is not life. Perhaps 
that can change, or perhaps the movement of  the arctic palms of  our glacial 
predecessors can never be replicated. Maybe we just have to cling to what’s left 
and try not to drown.