MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
The Joy of Visiting all 12 Sites in Indiana
“I try to go everywhere in the state I live in to see anything I read about or anything I hear about or that someone mentions.”
Travel is a passion for Dawn Overend.
She’s visited all 50 states and nearly 40 countries across the globe. She makes a point to familiarize herself with the different places where she’s lived by exploring extensively in those states, including New York, Georgia, California, Illinois and now Indiana.
“My parents died when they were very young and I decided to not have that kind of ‘I can do that tomorrow’ or ‘I can do that when I retire’ approach because that doesn’t always work out,” she said. “I always try to keep moving.”
In 2018, Overend retired from her career as a lawyer and moved from Chicago to Indiana. She visited museums and attractions across the state but said she fell in love with the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. Although she first became a member of the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites in 2018, it wasn’t until 2020 that she fully began realizing all the benefits.
Overend had multiple international trips booked that year and they were all canceled when the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, once the local travel restrictions lifted, she took the opportunity to explore more of the Hoosier State. She spent the next year experiencing all 11 state historic sites, from the serenity of Gene Stratton-Porter in the northeast to the architecture of tribal nations found at Angel Mounds in the southwest and everywhere in between.
“They are all so different, and I think that's the magic of it,” she said. “When you go to them, you learn so much about so many different things and I’ve just found it all fascinating. To be in a mansion and then to be at the mounds and then to be at the capitol — each one is so different, and I just really loved all of them.”
During her travels, Overend discovered unique details at each historic site that piqued her interest, like the working grist mill at the Whitewater Canal and the labyrinth at New Harmony. However, she said she was particularly inspired by the stories of the real people behind each of those places.
For instance, when she visited Stratton-Porter’s homes in Rome City and Geneva, Overend was amazed to learn that Indiana’s most prolific female author — whom Overend had never previously heard of — was also a photographer, filmmaker and naturalist.
“I found her fascinating,” she said. “Her books, her articles, her prints. What she did for conservation and the motion picture industry. For a woman in that day, it was just really extraordinary.”
In regard to Levi and Catharine Coffin, Overend admired that the abolitionist couple “sacrificed so much for people they did not know.” And she was so captivated by the beauty in T.C. Steele’s paintings that she purchased one of his works for her own home.
Now that she has been to each of the museum system’s 12 locations at least once, Overend said she looks forward to visiting them all again — in between her other world travels — to continue learning more about her home state. She encourages other Hoosiers to do the same.
“I try to go everywhere in the state I live in to see anything I read about or anything I hear about or that someone mentions,” she said. “I think a lot of people tend to overlook their own state, to travel on vacation and spend more time seeing the sights in another state, but I think it's really important to know your own state. With these sites, I think everybody who has not been to them would just love them. I know I really do.” ◆
