At twilight on July 26, 1836, after a two-week trip from southern Indiana, Marshall County’s first multi-family group of pioneer settlers made camp here and blew a conch shell to announce their arrival to Vincent Brownlee, who had spent the winter nearby after an advance party staked claims in 1835. The Blakeley, Brownlee, Dickson, Houghton, Lawson, Lewis, Logan, McDonald, Morris, Thompson, and Voreis families were joined before the end of the year by the Norris and Hults households, and others soon followed. About half a mile south along today’s 18 B Road lay the reservation of Potawatomi chief and spokesman Nas-wau-kee and his brother Quash-qua, where around 1828 the federal government paid M. H. Scott to build cabins for the chiefs before they were moved to Kansas in 1837. From 1842, the former reservation lands could be sold to help pay Indiana’s debts from the Wabash and Erie Canal, and the village of Maxinkuckee grew up on the old site, the only settlement in the county with such a connection. At the village’s western edge, Abraham Bogardus’s Allegheny House, built in 1855, marked the beginning of local tourism.