Hoosier History Live is an independently produced new media project about Indiana history, integrating podcasts, website, newsletter, and social media. Its original content comes initially from a live with call in weekly talk radio show hosted by author and historian Nelson Price. You can hear the show live Saturdays from noon to 1 pm ET. It’s over the air in Central Indiana at WICR 88.7 fm, or you can stream at the WICR HD1 app on your phone.

November 25, 2023

Ulen: The vagabond turned CEO and unusual Boone County town: encore

He quit school after the fifth grade to ride the rails, so Henry Ulen was an unlikely Hoosier to become an international business tycoon. Ulen also created and became the namesake of an unusual small town that's surrounded by the city of Lebanon in Boone County.

In this encore broadcast of a show from 2022, History Live will take a dual look at Henry Ulen, an industrialist, and the town of Ulen that he founded in the 1920s not far from where he had grown up. "I traveled from the time I was 14 until I was 18," Ulen once said. "The moment the idea hit to go somewhere, and it always did in the spring, I was off. St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dodge City, Cincinnati . . . anywhere the next freight train happened to be going."

Henry Ulen (1871-1963) founded Ulen & Company, a prestigious business that oversaw infrastructure projects in places like Bolivia, Iran and Greece. The company was based in New York City until Ulen decided to return to Indiana and create a town as a community for his executives and engineers. Although that's no longer the case (Ulen & Company shut down more than 60 years ago), the 40-acre town still has about 120 residents. Just as in the 1920s, the hub of the community is a golf course and country club.

Our guide as we explore the CEO and the town is Justin Clark of the Indiana Historical Bureau, who has written a blog and produced a video about all things Ulen. Justin is the digital initiatives director at the bureau, which is a division of the Indiana State Library. Justin notes that most of the original homes built in the town of Ulen during the 1920s and '30s remain along its four streets, one of which is called Ulen Boulevard. Today, the town's residents primarily are a mix of middle-class and upper middle-class professionals and retirees. The hub of the town is Ulen Country Club and its 18-hole golf course.

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Nelson addressed the annual meeting of the Society of Indiana Pioneers on November 4 at Meridian Hills Country Club in Indianapolis. He spoke about the group's Spring Pilgrimage, which took travelers to eastern Indiana. Highlights of the tour included the Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site in Fountain City, the site of the former Starr Piano Company in Richmond, and the Walk of Fame for music notables who recorded in 1920s and '30s at Gennett Records, also in Richmond. En route, the group also visited the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home & Museum in Greenfield.

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