12 November 1912

Old Aqueduct Club Gavel

The "Old Aqueduct Club" was a unique Fort Wayne civic group that celebrated memories of the bygone canal era focusing on the outdoor recreation and youthful activities at the covered aqueduct in Fort Wayne. The aqueduct carried the main channel of the Wabash & Erie Canal across the Saint Mary's River. The Old Aqueduct Club was formed in November 1912 by several citizens who as boys played and swam in the aqueduct that had served the canal and had not been used for a quarter of a century. The rules of the club stated that members had to be male persons forty-five years of age or older who had lived west of Calhoun Street before 1872 and had gone swimming in the old aqueduct.

The group selected Charles McCulloch as its first president. The Club annually held a dinner meeting and by the 1930s there were as many as 500 members who claimed to have met the requirements. By 1955, there were only eleven members left to attend the banquet and the club was dissolved.

Today, in a grassy patch near the intersections of Rockhill, Main, and Thieme Streets, stands a monument dedicated on 16 July 1927 to the Old Aqueduct Club. It is a statue of two young boys dressed in the coveralls of the 1870s. The inscription simply says, "Let's Go Swimmin."

This wooden gavel is inscribed, "OLD AQUEDUCT CLUB, organized 12 November 1912. The mal-let was made of timber taken from the Old Aqueduct over St. Mary's River Fort Wayne, Ind." Members of the Old Aqueduct Club used the gavel during their annual dinner meetings.