58 SMITHSONIAN | March 2020
A view from the
cabin at Wild-
fl ower Woods,
on the shores
of Sylvan Lake,
where Strat-
ton-Porter spent
her early 50s.A decorative
fabric moth.
Stratton-Porter
spent years doc-
umenting moths
in the wild but
declared that
she was not an
entomologist.Y
ELLOW SPRAYS of prairie dock
bob overhead in the September
morning light. More than ten
feet tall, with a central taproot
reaching even deeper under-
ground, this plant, with its el-
ephant-ear leaves the texture
of sandpaper, makes me feel tipsy and small, like
Alice in Wonderland.
I am walking on a trail in a part of northeast In-
diana that in the 19th century was impenetrable
swamp and forest, a wilderness of some 13,000 acres
called the Limberlost. Nobody knows the true ori-
gin of the name. Some say an agile man known as
“Limber” Jim Corbus once got lost there. He either
returned alive or died in the quicksand and quag-
mires, depending which version you hear.
Today, a piece of the old Limberlost survives in
the Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve, 465 acres of re-
stored swampland in the midst of Indiana’s endless
industrial corn and soybean fi elds. It’s not obvious to
the naked eye, but life here is imitating art imitating
life. The artist was Gene Stratton-Porter, an intrepid
naturalist, novelist , photographer and movie pro-
ducer who described and dramatized the Limberlost
over and over, and so, even a century after her death,
served as a catalyst for saving this portion of it.
As famous in the early 1900s as J.K. Rowling is
now, Stratton-Porter published 26 books: novels, na-
ture studies, poetry collections and children’s books.
Only 55 books published between 1895 and 1945 sold
upwards of one million copies. Gene Stratton-Porter
wrote fi ve of those books—far more than any other
author of her time. Nine of her novels were made into
fi lms, fi ve by Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, one
of the fi rst movie and production companies owned
by a woman. “She did things wives of wealthy bankers
just did not do,” says Katherine Gould, curator of cul-
tural history at the Indiana State Museum.
Her natural settings, wholesome themes and strong
lead characters fulfi lled the public’s desires to con-
nect with nature and give children positive role mod-
els. She wrote at a pivotal point in American history.
The frontier was fading. Small agrarian communities
were turning into industrial centers connected by
railroads. By the time she moved to the area, in 1888,
this unique watery wilderness was disappearing be-
cause of the Swamp Act of 1850, which had grantedMy dear Girl:
In the fi rst place will you allow me to suggest that you forget
hereafter to tack the “ess” on to “author”, because one who writes
a book or a poem is an author and literature has no sex.
–Gene Stratton-Porter
LETTER TO MISS MABEL ANDERSON, MARCH 9, 1923