December 23, 2022 • 26 mins
On this episode of Indiana Stories:Jeff Townsend talks to Karen Graybill from the Spencer County Visitors Bureau in Santa Claus Indiana.Jeff and Karen discuss the history of Santa Claus Indiana- how the town was named, some of the rich traditions, and how their post office program 'Santa's Elves' responds to Christmas letters from around the world. They also talk about other attractions and things in Spencer County Indiana.Thanks for listening to the podcast, listen to more episodes to hear more Indiana Stories.Indiana StoriesSanta Claus Indiana.Spencer County Indiana.Supporters of the Podcast:Theme music provided by the ElmsUse Poddin for your podcast transcript, they've got all the tools that make it easy and great!Use PodcastPage to create a professional website for your content. Use the code INDIEPODCASTER to get 15% off!Content creators, use Boomcaster-- the easiest way to record studio-quality podcasts and video interviews from anywhere! Use the code INDIEPODCASTER to save 20% off your first three months!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This podcast is a Jeff Townsend Mediaproduction. This is Jeff Townsen. Thank
you for joining us for another episodeof Indiana Stories. Merry Christmas and welcome
(00:23):
back to Indiana Stories. Of course, like I just said, this is
Christmas Week here. I'm Jeff Townsend, the host is usual, and I
have a Christmas gift for you.Today I'm going to be talking to Karen
Graybill. She works for the SpencerCounty Visitors Bureau Santa Claus, Indiana.
Yes, isn't that just cool tosay Santa Claus Indiana. We speak about
Santa Claus, Indiana during the holidayseason and how that kind of took shape
(00:47):
and how the name happened, andthen some of the history there and some
of the stuff they do to thisday. We also talk about other cool
things going on in the county likeHoliday worlds, flash and Safari and stuff
like that. So this is avery awesome Christmas episode to share it for
you. After this episode, though, just as a heads up, we're
gonna be back in two weeks.We'll take a few weeks off for Christmas.
We'll come back with some more awesomeIndiana Stories. Let's get to this
(01:08):
conversation about Santa Claus, Indiana.But before we do that, I want
to thank podon dot Io transcription serviceboomcaster dot com the best way to record
remotely by far the best quality,and then, of course podcast page dot
io the go to place to makeyour website. Make sure you use and
check out all three of those.All right, let's jump into this conversation
(01:30):
i'll learn about Santa Claus, Indiana. Joining me today is Karen gray Bill.
I said that right right, Karen, just as it reads, Oh,
thank goodness, man, it's gonnahave to do read you there.
No, but she is with theSpencer County Visitors Bureau. Since it's Christmas
week here, we're going to talkabout a special town that they have there.
In the meantime, we'll go aheadand get it kicked off here.
(01:52):
Karen, I'll let you introduce yourself. How long have you been involved with
the visitors Bureau there? I startedhere in November of two nineteen, so
right before the Christmas season. Thatspecial little town you talked about, Santa
Claus, Indiana gets very busy thattime of year, so I was kind
of thrown into the fire when Ifirst started based on the timing. So
(02:14):
yeah, I've been. This isnow my let's see nineteen twenty, twenty
one, twenty two. This ismy fourth Christmas here in Santa Claus.
Are you from that? I'm nottrying to adult too much information. Are
you from the area? Actually,I'm actually from a neighboring county, But
when you grow up and grow upin that county, you pretty much grow
up in this county to a lotof the attractions we have here. Of
(02:36):
course, are going to draw inthe neighboring counties just to kind of paint
the picture here if somebody people havenever been there. It's very rural Indiana
southern Indiana, Ohio River border.Correct. So yes, it is not
like Evansville over there, not thatsize small town, not at all.
The town of Santa Claus itself hasa population of maybe twenty six hundred,
(03:00):
so it's a very small rural area. The county itself is also very rural.
We are centrally located, though closeto a lot of things. We're
about seventy miles west of Louisville,a little bit closer to east of Evansville,
so we're close to a lot ofthings, but we kind of like
our little rural area here. Oh, absolutely, also the home of Holiday
(03:23):
World. Correct, absolutely, yesthat that twenty six hundred population grows a
lot in the summer. They bringin about a million visitors over the summer.
Yep. And it'll kind of touchupon it later. But it's also
grown pretty significantly in comparison to whatit was like twenty years ago. We
didn't even have like a thousand peoplethere. Yeah. Well, yes,
(03:45):
the town itself has grown leaps andbounds just by attractions alone. It's grown
pum So it's kind of interesting here. Like the first thing I was curious
of, how did it get thename Santa Claus right? And it sounds
like like when I was researching beforethis, which I did do. No,
I'm not a scholar or anything orher story in of Spencer County,
(04:09):
but it sounds like they tried toname it something else and it just didn't
work out well. It originally,back in the eighteen fifties, it was
still known by its original name ofdepending on you who you ask, either
Santa Fee or Santa Fe spelled Fee. Around that time, the town decided
(04:29):
they were large enough that they wereeligible for a post office, so they
sent in their application to the UnitedStates Postal Service and were promptly rejected because
there was another town in Indiana calledSanta fe Fe so too close, you
know, the names were too close. So they kind of had to regroup.
(04:50):
And legend has it they gathered inthe local church on Christmas Eve night.
It was a snowy night. Theadults were discussing what they could possibly
rename the town. The children wererunning around playing. Suddenly a gust of
wind blew the doors open. Theyheard the sound of jingle bells, and
(05:11):
the kids yelled Santa Claus. Andthe adults decided, that's our new name,
and so they reapplied to the USPASand they were The post office was
established in eighteen fifty six, andwe've been Santa Claus ever since. That's
so interesting and so cool when youjust think about it. I don't know,
over time, like was fast forward, like fifty years, it started
(05:35):
to like develop this reputation, rightbecause it's like the only world's post office
that has this kind of a name. Yes, they started receiving letters to
Santa's early back in the nineteen hundreds, like nineteen ten or something like that.
In I believe it was nineteen fourteen, they were they started getting these
(05:55):
letters. The postmaster at the time, believed his name is James Martin,
decided that these letters couldn't go unansweredbecause of course they were most likely coming
from children, and children writing aletter to Santa, they absolutely deserve a
response. So on his own time, on his own dime, he started
answering those letters. Then not toolong after that, Santa Claus was featured
(06:19):
on Ripley's Believe It or Not.The town's post office and the postmaster were
featured in I think it was maybenineteen thirty. So that kind of really
increased the amount of mail and theletters to Santa that the post office started
getting, and so that started areally great tradition that continues today. There's
(06:40):
letters from all over the world,correct there are They obviously the majority of
them come from the US, butthey come in from all over the world
as well. I know that thevolunteers have had to sometimes they've gotten high
school students involved those take foreign languagesto come in and help them out with
(07:01):
translating the letters. But you know, no matter where they're coming from,
there's a lot of commonalities and inthe letters that they get and they're all
they're all special in their own way. So eventually, right it just started
embracing it like full on, likewe're going to do this. You'd start
replying to all of them like youjust said, And now you do that
in December, like you have doyou have to bring in like a bunch
(07:26):
of people to do this in December? And like, how much do you
think you're actually getting? It's awell. The group is called Santa's Elves.
It's a group of volunteers led byour Chief Elf, Patricia Cook.
It's a core group of volunteers thatanswer the letters. But they obviously take
all the help they can get whenit comes down to answering those letters in
(07:46):
December. Because they you can mailyour letter in any time of year.
You can mail it in in January, you can mail it in in the
middle of the summer. The lettersjust pour in. Of course, more
of them pour in the closer itgets to Chris. We estimate that they
get about twenty five thousand to thirtythousand letters each year, so that is
(08:07):
a lot of letters to answer.So in addition to that group of volunteers,
you know, they'll put out acall to the community. Some of
the civic groups will come and help. Girl Scout troops will come and help.
Honestly, we've had visitors who tothe area who they don't live here,
but they've heard about it and theyjust want to come in and help
answer those letters. A something ofa form letter I suppose that is used
(08:31):
just to get you through that quantityof letters. There has to be a
little bit of a simplification to it. But every letter gets a personal note
on it. They read those letters, they take those letters to heart,
and they put a response on thosethose letters back to make sure that those
kids know that their letter has beenreceived and read and appreciated. I think
(08:54):
if you're a resident or a regularin the like I'm not a resident of
the area, but here every day, I think you can can get a
little bit used to it to thepoint that you maybe think that every town
it's like this, but it's obviouslynot. There's definitely a different feel to
this place. How can there notbe When the businesses are named Chris have
(09:18):
Christmas names, the streets are allhave Christmas names. Uh, there's Santa
statues, twenty plus Santa statues throughoutthe town. So there's there's no way
to not get in the Christmas spiritwhen you're here, so it's a It's
an interesting place to be any timeof year, but particularly at Christmas time.
(09:41):
The first three weekends in December arethe town wide Santa Claus Christmas Celebration.
We kind of have an unofficial kickThanksgiving weekend to sort of consider the
unofficial kickoff to the Christmas celebration,But those first three weekends in December are
really when the town kind of goesall out and there's events and act ativities
and things like that. We don'treally have an exact count for the number
(10:03):
of visitors it brings in, butwe estimate it's in the thousands. They
come here for a lot of reasons. There are, of course events during
those first three weekends of December.If you've never roasted chestnuts over an open
fire, you can come here anddo that at Santa's Candy Castle on Saturday
(10:24):
evenings during the Christmas celebration that wehave a giant Christmas parade that just happened.
It's the second weekend of a secondSaturday of December. Every year.
There's a big arts and craft show. There's just all sorts of Christmas themed
activities. You can have Christmas Dinnerwith Santa at Santa's Lodge. There's a
(10:45):
Breakfast with Santa one Saturday. Sothere's a lot of very festive activities that
happen, So it definitely brings peopleinto town beyond the events and activities though.
The Santa Claus Post Office puts outan annual picture postmark every December.
It's available just for the month ofDecember, so that brings a lot of
(11:07):
people into the area that want toput that postmark on their Christmas cards or
any other holiday mail that they're sendingout. So we definitely definitely see an
increase in the crowds at Christmas time. Oh, I have no doubt.
And there's we'll get into this alittle bit more, but you also have
other times of the year where you'reseeing an increase of people. But the
(11:28):
Christmas spirit there seems to be reallyintense, and I could see where it'd
be like you could almost get usedto it after a while, but go
in there initially, like all thestreets are named after Christmas thing, Santa
Claus things, sure, but youget used to it after a while.
It's never so evident as when someoneI have to give an address to someone
(11:50):
who does not live in the area, who is not familiar with the area.
For example, our address here atthe Visitors Bureau office. We're at
Kringle Lane, and I just hadto give that address to someone the other
day, and of course she laughedwhen I did. It doesn't it doesn't
even phase me anymore when I saysomething's on Candy Cane Lane or Mistletoe Drive,
(12:11):
because that's just that's just where thingsare located in Santa Claus, Indiana.
But it's definitely people get a kickout of it. Is there like
a north pole or like there there, I'm going to start a new street
there. We don't really have wedI'm not sure if that, you know,
there's I'd be surprised if there wasn't, because there are a lot of
streets in this time for a smallarea, there are a lot of streets.
(12:35):
There's a large gated community where you'llfind most of these fun Christmas themed
names. I'm you know, I'mnot sure if there's a north pole or
not. But we've got we've gotPrincter Drive, Snowball Lane, We've we've
got a lot of the bases coveredwith the Christmas theme names. You talk
about this gated community, and wementioned earlier this town is really this community
(12:56):
is really chrone. In the lastthirty years didn't even have a thousand people
in it, going back to theearly nineties, and now it obviously has
more in that. And what's thiscommunity called. Is it like Christmas Lake
Village or something right, Christmas LakeVillage. Yes, that's the gated community.
I mentioned that there's about twenty sixhundred people that live in this area
(13:16):
right now, and I think thelatest figure I heard was something over ninety
percent of them live in Christmas LakeVillage. So because it's a rural area,
that's where that's where most of thepeople live, is inside this area.
And that's another fun Christmas event thathappens in Christmas Lake Village. It
(13:37):
is a gated community, so you'renot just allowed to drive in there and
check things out. But at Christmastime they open up for two nights during
the Christmas season for their Festival ofLights. It's nine miles of very festively
decorated houses that you can drive throughand see people go all out. The
(13:58):
different neighborhoods will sometimes do themes,so every house in a certain area will
have let's say a Grinch theme orsomething like that. It's it's really something
to see. I heard it actuallyhappened just this past weekend, and I
heard that there were there was somuch traffic. I believe some people were
(14:18):
saying it took almost an hour toget through those nine miles houses. Because
there's a lot to see and alot of people want to see it.
That would be I'm sure the kidswould really like to drive through there and
see that. Dude, that soundsreally neat for sure. I know my
kids would like that. I canremember doing it as a kid myself,
so it's it's definitely something that isabsolutely an all ages event. Kids and
(14:39):
kids at heart both will enjoy it. That's cool. I always love going
out and doing that. That's likea tradition, and it sounds like that's
a great place to do that.That's awesome. It really is. Obviously,
this town also has another major thingin it. It's holiday world splashing
so far, I think is howit's actually phrased. Now, Yes,
it was named what Santa claus Landit was. Yes, it was called
(15:01):
Santa claus Land when it originally openedin August of nineteen forty six, and
it was actually the first themed amusementpark. We actually beat Disney by I
think a year or two. Thisis like known as the world's first theme
park per se. That just blowsmy mind. And of course it's very
(15:24):
different now than it was back then. Back then they had a house of
dolls, and I think probably themost exciting ride you might find would have
been like say, a Merry GoRound. And now it's all about the
award winning roller coasters and amazing waterparks. So very different, but still
just as much loved. I think. Yeah, but this is obviously a
(15:48):
pretty cool theme park gone up andabove for the water park as well on
it. Yeah, it's well noted. Also, like you said, it's
the first, but it also haslike a roller coaster there. I believe
that is like world famous. It'slike or the number one wooden roller coaster
roller gets voted or something. SoI'm trying, I'm trying to remember what
that's it has several several of theirroller coasters have won awards. They've got
(16:11):
I think they have of their oftheir roller coasters, two or three of
them are the wooden roller coasters.I think there's I think there's only maybe
twenty or soul wooden roller I wasjust reading something about this not too long
ago. There are not that manywooden roller coasters in the entire country,
and yet Holiday World that's several ofthem. And I think true roller coaster
(16:34):
enthusiasts, I think wooden roller coastersare typically the thing that they love.
But they don't just have the woodenroller coasters. They also have the Thunderbird,
which is one of the it's thewhat the winged roller coaster where you're
so they have they have a varietyof things, and then in the water
(16:55):
park they actually have the I believeit's the world's launched water coaster where it
actually launches you into this ride.That was I think that was the new
water park edition in twenty twenty,I believe. Yeah, so the Vote
it's called the Voyager, that's thewind roll coaster. It's called okay,
the Voyage. Yes, that's athat is an amazing wooden roller coaster.
(17:21):
So it also looks like that.And when I had asked people about this,
I don't know if this is stillthe case or not. So when
I talked about this town and whenHoliday World is brought up. They all
were like, oh, they dofree soft drinks there. They do free
drinks there. Like everybody I talkedto is like, they do free drinks
there. I don't know if theystill do, but I was like,
wow, usually you gotta pay liketen dollars for a coke at an amusement
(17:41):
park. So that was pretty coolexactly, And they do still do that.
They do the free drinks throughout thepark. They have free parking,
free Wi Fi, and the freedrinks are the very, very big selling
points of this park because, likeyou said, you go to a theme
park and you expect I mean notonly does the admission, you know,
(18:02):
you have to fork out that admissionjust to get a drink a soda.
You're looking at a pretty fair,you know, pretty hefty price tag.
But you're not going to find thatat Holiday World. That's They've got the
drink stations located through I believe theycall them oasis throughout throughout the park,
and there is no limit on those. And on a hot day, that's
(18:25):
a really good thing to have.That's the thing about Indiana. It can
get crazy hot, it can be, but particularly like being down there by
the Ohio River, I feel likeit's more humid, it's more hot,
like in the summer, So thatis definitely a really good selling point.
We've we've got that unpredictable Indiana weathertoo, where it can be just blistering
(18:45):
hot one day and then not somuch the next day. But yeah,
the summers can be pretty brutal.So yeah, the free beverage is definitely
a good thing for sure. Sosome other things I thought were inner esting
about this town. It's notable forJay Cutler, quarterback in fl And then
(19:07):
it's also had a cool stuff likeit was involved in like a national campaign
for Coca Cola's Christmas project called Santa'sForgotten Letters in twenty ten. I thought
that was really cool. Uh,that's not something obviously that was before my
time here at the Visitors Bureau,But I'm not at all surprised this town
gets a lot of national attention.Yeah, no, and I can see
(19:29):
why, right, because then Iread that it's one of the twenty eleven
it was named like one of Forbes'stop Christmas destinations in the world. Obviously
at Santa Claus is name of thetown, but I thought that was pretty
cool as well. So it's it'sknown beyond just Indiana per se. It's
this is known, it is,but we're constantly being discovered too. We
are just about we're less than tenmiles off of Interstate sixty four, and
(19:53):
I mentioned earlier that we're about seventymiles west of Louisville and kind of situated
between Evansville, Indiana and Louisville.So there's a lot of travelers that see
signs on the interstate for Santa Claus, Indiana. They had no idea that
this place existed. So we getparticularly here at the Visitors Bureau office because
we are the visitor information center.They stop in. We're their first stop.
(20:18):
They say, tell us about thisplace. We didn't even know it
existed, and we saw the signand we just had to stop because how
can you see a sign that saysSanta Claus and not stop in to see
what it's about. So it's asmuch as we love the people that are
familiar with us and come to visityear after year after year, I kind
of love those people that stumble uponus even more because then we kind of
(20:40):
get to introduce them to this place. It takes you back to the days
where the internet wasn't really a thingor as much. Right, well,
you had to literally stumble across things. You tend to think that people are
so plugged in now that nothing isreally undiscovered, But there's still apparently things
to discover, and I guess we'reone of them. Oh, what else
(21:00):
did I see? Lifetime movie?A Lifetime movie was filmed there snowed in
Christmas. Man, I love mesome Lifetime television movie. So that was
pretty cool when I saw that.Before your time, though, our name
has been used in a couple ofmovies, and sometimes people come here expecting
to see what they saw in themovie. And I don't want to say
(21:22):
they're disappointed, because you're never disappointedwhen you come here, but it's funny
what they expect. Apparently a fewyears back, there was I believe it
was a commercial for radio Shack andthey mentioned I think that it was called
Rudolph's Diner that was supposedly in SantaClaus, Indiana. We still get people
coming here asking where Rudolph's Diner is. There was never a Rudolph's Diner here,
(21:45):
so we have to have to quicklyput that to rest. But just
this year, I think it's theeither the USPS or UPS mentioned name drops
Santa Claus, Indiana in one oftheir ads this year, so we get
we get a lot of mentions likethat, but you know, come see
us firsthand, so you can seeexactly what the town's about. Don't don't
(22:07):
trust the Lifetimes. I don't remember. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have
to watch it. You know,it's probably got some crazy twist, right,
like there's a bad husband or ababysitter or something in this snowy little
town. I don't know. Ithink in the movie they claim that our
town has an airport. Yeah,not quite. But when you get outside
(22:29):
of the town, really, andit's the biggest town in the county,
right, I believe. I believeit is. The rock Port is technically
the county seat, and it isnot very big. So that just tells
you how rural and small part ofIndiana this is. It's not like where
I'm at, right, I'm nearto the capital. Right, there's more
people in my neighborhood than there isin that town, exactly, exactly.
(22:52):
Yes, it's a different life ofliving, living of life, however you
want to phrase it. And Ithink it's pretty cool, just for people
to go down there and check out, because the south part of the state
has a bunch of cool stuff thatdoesn't always get as much attention as like
Central Indiana North exactly. So Ialways love learning about things in southern Indiana.
What are some other things there aboutthe town that we haven't covered that
(23:12):
you think are really neat cool.Well, not about the town of Santa
Claus, but just five miles downthe road, we have a national park
and a state park dedicated to AbrahamLincoln because he spent fourteen years of his
life here, and they were fourteenrather formative years. His family moved here
at the age of seven, andthey didn't move away until he was twenty
(23:33):
one, so a lot of thingshappened. That his mother passed away while
they lived here. Her grave siteis actually at our National Park. He
developed his love of reading and learninghere, and really, you know,
he kind of probably the building blocksof what eventually turned him into a great
statesman were first. You know,we're first happened here. So we always
(23:56):
say that we're known for a probablybest known for a couple of most famous
bearded guys, Santa and Abraham Lincolnand that's that really is very true because
literally just five minutes down the roadis the abs stomping grounds from when he
was you know, a child andyoung adult. So I think that's a
that's a very interesting thing. Youknow, people come here for the obviously
(24:19):
if they come to the town ofSanta Claus or this area at all,
Santa Christmas holiday world, that's definitelya draw. But we've also got that
absolutely rich history with Abraham Lincoln righthere, you know, just five minutes
away. Awesome. This has beena fun conversation, and of course in
the show notes I'll put everything aboutthe Visitors Bureau and to check that out.
(24:42):
I do appreciate you taking the timeto do this because I think this
is one of those things because obviouslypeople listen to this podcast are mostly from
Indiana, even though some are fromall around the world, which is kind
of weird to me. But nevertheless, if you're in this day or around,
I think it's something you should checkout. Maybe just beyond the holiday
world that we're all used to,maybe maybe go into the town of Santa
Claus and give it a good lookingand this Christmas light thing at the Christmas
(25:07):
Lake Village sounds super cool to me, so it absolutely is. You put
it on your calendar for next year, Karen. I really do appreciate you
taking the time to do this.I know it was kind of thrown on
you, and you've done a fantasticjob. You might have a full time
career ahead of you in some sortof audio or television. I don't know
what do you think. I wouldn'tgo that far, but I appreciate it.
(25:30):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Indiana Stories. If you like
what you heard, you can goto Indiana Stories dot com for more episodes
and other stories relating to Indiana.Also, if you're enjoying this podcast,
there's several things you can follow,the podcast itself, the newsletter, and
various other things. Thanks again forlistening, and we will be back with
another episode, and I hope youjoin us for another Indiana Story, Going
(26:00):
back, going back, And thequestion is do I stay here? Will
(26:22):
you be back? Are you gonnacome back? Will you be back?
Are you coming back? Jeff CountingMedia b
This podcast is a Jeff Townsend Mediaproduction. This is Jeff Townsen. Thank
you for joining us for another episodeof Indiana Stories. Merry Christmas and welcome
(00:23):
back to Indiana Stories. Of course, like I just said, this is
Christmas Week here. I'm Jeff Townsend, the host is usual, and I
have a Christmas gift for you.Today I'm going to be talking to Karen
Graybill. She works for the SpencerCounty Visitors Bureau Santa Claus, Indiana.
Yes, isn't that just cool tosay Santa Claus Indiana. We speak about
Santa Claus, Indiana during the holidayseason and how that kind of took shape
(00:47):
and how the name happened, andthen some of the history there and some
of the stuff they do to thisday. We also talk about other cool
things going on in the county likeHoliday worlds, flash and Safari and stuff
like that. So this is avery awesome Christmas episode to share it for
you. After this episode, though, just as a heads up, we're
gonna be back in two weeks.We'll take a few weeks off for Christmas.
We'll come back with some more awesomeIndiana Stories. Let's get to this
(01:08):
conversation about Santa Claus, Indiana.But before we do that, I want
to thank podon dot Io transcription serviceboomcaster dot com the best way to record
remotely by far the best quality,and then, of course podcast page dot
io the go to place to makeyour website. Make sure you use and
check out all three of those.All right, let's jump into this conversation
(01:30):
i'll learn about Santa Claus, Indiana. Joining me today is Karen gray Bill.
I said that right right, Karen, just as it reads, Oh,
thank goodness, man, it's gonnahave to do read you there.
No, but she is with theSpencer County Visitors Bureau. Since it's Christmas
week here, we're going to talkabout a special town that they have there.
In the meantime, we'll go aheadand get it kicked off here.
(01:52):
Karen, I'll let you introduce yourself. How long have you been involved with
the visitors Bureau there? I startedhere in November of two nineteen, so
right before the Christmas season. Thatspecial little town you talked about, Santa
Claus, Indiana gets very busy thattime of year, so I was kind
of thrown into the fire when Ifirst started based on the timing. So
(02:14):
yeah, I've been. This isnow my let's see nineteen twenty, twenty
one, twenty two. This ismy fourth Christmas here in Santa Claus.
Are you from that? I'm nottrying to adult too much information. Are
you from the area? Actually,I'm actually from a neighboring county, But
when you grow up and grow upin that county, you pretty much grow
up in this county to a lotof the attractions we have here. Of
(02:36):
course, are going to draw inthe neighboring counties just to kind of paint
the picture here if somebody people havenever been there. It's very rural Indiana
southern Indiana, Ohio River border.Correct. So yes, it is not
like Evansville over there, not thatsize small town, not at all.
The town of Santa Claus itself hasa population of maybe twenty six hundred,
(03:00):
so it's a very small rural area. The county itself is also very rural.
We are centrally located, though closeto a lot of things. We're
about seventy miles west of Louisville,a little bit closer to east of Evansville,
so we're close to a lot ofthings, but we kind of like
our little rural area here. Oh, absolutely, also the home of Holiday
(03:23):
World. Correct, absolutely, yesthat that twenty six hundred population grows a
lot in the summer. They bringin about a million visitors over the summer.
Yep. And it'll kind of touchupon it later. But it's also
grown pretty significantly in comparison to whatit was like twenty years ago. We
didn't even have like a thousand peoplethere. Yeah. Well, yes,
(03:45):
the town itself has grown leaps andbounds just by attractions alone. It's grown
pum So it's kind of interesting here. Like the first thing I was curious
of, how did it get thename Santa Claus right? And it sounds
like like when I was researching beforethis, which I did do. No,
I'm not a scholar or anything orher story in of Spencer County,
(04:09):
but it sounds like they tried toname it something else and it just didn't
work out well. It originally,back in the eighteen fifties, it was
still known by its original name ofdepending on you who you ask, either
Santa Fee or Santa Fe spelled Fee. Around that time, the town decided
(04:29):
they were large enough that they wereeligible for a post office, so they
sent in their application to the UnitedStates Postal Service and were promptly rejected because
there was another town in Indiana calledSanta fe Fe so too close, you
know, the names were too close. So they kind of had to regroup.
(04:50):
And legend has it they gathered inthe local church on Christmas Eve night.
It was a snowy night. Theadults were discussing what they could possibly
rename the town. The children wererunning around playing. Suddenly a gust of
wind blew the doors open. Theyheard the sound of jingle bells, and
(05:11):
the kids yelled Santa Claus. Andthe adults decided, that's our new name,
and so they reapplied to the USPASand they were The post office was
established in eighteen fifty six, andwe've been Santa Claus ever since. That's
so interesting and so cool when youjust think about it. I don't know,
over time, like was fast forward, like fifty years, it started
(05:35):
to like develop this reputation, rightbecause it's like the only world's post office
that has this kind of a name. Yes, they started receiving letters to
Santa's early back in the nineteen hundreds, like nineteen ten or something like that.
In I believe it was nineteen fourteen, they were they started getting these
(05:55):
letters. The postmaster at the time, believed his name is James Martin,
decided that these letters couldn't go unansweredbecause of course they were most likely coming
from children, and children writing aletter to Santa, they absolutely deserve a
response. So on his own time, on his own dime, he started
answering those letters. Then not toolong after that, Santa Claus was featured
(06:19):
on Ripley's Believe It or Not.The town's post office and the postmaster were
featured in I think it was maybenineteen thirty. So that kind of really
increased the amount of mail and theletters to Santa that the post office started
getting, and so that started areally great tradition that continues today. There's
(06:40):
letters from all over the world,correct there are They obviously the majority of
them come from the US, butthey come in from all over the world
as well. I know that thevolunteers have had to sometimes they've gotten high
school students involved those take foreign languagesto come in and help them out with
(07:01):
translating the letters. But you know, no matter where they're coming from,
there's a lot of commonalities and inthe letters that they get and they're all
they're all special in their own way. So eventually, right it just started
embracing it like full on, likewe're going to do this. You'd start
replying to all of them like youjust said, And now you do that
in December, like you have doyou have to bring in like a bunch
(07:26):
of people to do this in December? And like, how much do you
think you're actually getting? It's awell. The group is called Santa's Elves.
It's a group of volunteers led byour Chief Elf, Patricia Cook.
It's a core group of volunteers thatanswer the letters. But they obviously take
all the help they can get whenit comes down to answering those letters in
(07:46):
December. Because they you can mailyour letter in any time of year.
You can mail it in in January, you can mail it in in the
middle of the summer. The lettersjust pour in. Of course, more
of them pour in the closer itgets to Chris. We estimate that they
get about twenty five thousand to thirtythousand letters each year, so that is
(08:07):
a lot of letters to answer.So in addition to that group of volunteers,
you know, they'll put out acall to the community. Some of
the civic groups will come and help. Girl Scout troops will come and help.
Honestly, we've had visitors who tothe area who they don't live here,
but they've heard about it and theyjust want to come in and help
answer those letters. A something ofa form letter I suppose that is used
(08:31):
just to get you through that quantityof letters. There has to be a
little bit of a simplification to it. But every letter gets a personal note
on it. They read those letters, they take those letters to heart,
and they put a response on thosethose letters back to make sure that those
kids know that their letter has beenreceived and read and appreciated. I think
(08:54):
if you're a resident or a regularin the like I'm not a resident of
the area, but here every day, I think you can can get a
little bit used to it to thepoint that you maybe think that every town
it's like this, but it's obviouslynot. There's definitely a different feel to
this place. How can there notbe When the businesses are named Chris have
(09:18):
Christmas names, the streets are allhave Christmas names. Uh, there's Santa
statues, twenty plus Santa statues throughoutthe town. So there's there's no way
to not get in the Christmas spiritwhen you're here, so it's a It's
an interesting place to be any timeof year, but particularly at Christmas time.
(09:41):
The first three weekends in December arethe town wide Santa Claus Christmas Celebration.
We kind of have an unofficial kickThanksgiving weekend to sort of consider the
unofficial kickoff to the Christmas celebration,But those first three weekends in December are
really when the town kind of goesall out and there's events and act ativities
and things like that. We don'treally have an exact count for the number
(10:03):
of visitors it brings in, butwe estimate it's in the thousands. They
come here for a lot of reasons. There are, of course events during
those first three weekends of December.If you've never roasted chestnuts over an open
fire, you can come here anddo that at Santa's Candy Castle on Saturday
(10:24):
evenings during the Christmas celebration that wehave a giant Christmas parade that just happened.
It's the second weekend of a secondSaturday of December. Every year.
There's a big arts and craft show. There's just all sorts of Christmas themed
activities. You can have Christmas Dinnerwith Santa at Santa's Lodge. There's a
(10:45):
Breakfast with Santa one Saturday. Sothere's a lot of very festive activities that
happen, So it definitely brings peopleinto town beyond the events and activities though.
The Santa Claus Post Office puts outan annual picture postmark every December.
It's available just for the month ofDecember, so that brings a lot of
(11:07):
people into the area that want toput that postmark on their Christmas cards or
any other holiday mail that they're sendingout. So we definitely definitely see an
increase in the crowds at Christmas time. Oh, I have no doubt.
And there's we'll get into this alittle bit more, but you also have
other times of the year where you'reseeing an increase of people. But the
(11:28):
Christmas spirit there seems to be reallyintense, and I could see where it'd
be like you could almost get usedto it after a while, but go
in there initially, like all thestreets are named after Christmas thing, Santa
Claus things, sure, but youget used to it after a while.
It's never so evident as when someoneI have to give an address to someone
(11:50):
who does not live in the area, who is not familiar with the area.
For example, our address here atthe Visitors Bureau office. We're at
Kringle Lane, and I just hadto give that address to someone the other
day, and of course she laughedwhen I did. It doesn't it doesn't
even phase me anymore when I saysomething's on Candy Cane Lane or Mistletoe Drive,
(12:11):
because that's just that's just where thingsare located in Santa Claus, Indiana.
But it's definitely people get a kickout of it. Is there like
a north pole or like there there, I'm going to start a new street
there. We don't really have wedI'm not sure if that, you know,
there's I'd be surprised if there wasn't, because there are a lot of
streets in this time for a smallarea, there are a lot of streets.
(12:35):
There's a large gated community where you'llfind most of these fun Christmas themed
names. I'm you know, I'mnot sure if there's a north pole or
not. But we've got we've gotPrincter Drive, Snowball Lane, We've we've
got a lot of the bases coveredwith the Christmas theme names. You talk
about this gated community, and wementioned earlier this town is really this community
(12:56):
is really chrone. In the lastthirty years didn't even have a thousand people
in it, going back to theearly nineties, and now it obviously has
more in that. And what's thiscommunity called. Is it like Christmas Lake
Village or something right, Christmas LakeVillage. Yes, that's the gated community.
I mentioned that there's about twenty sixhundred people that live in this area
(13:16):
right now, and I think thelatest figure I heard was something over ninety
percent of them live in Christmas LakeVillage. So because it's a rural area,
that's where that's where most of thepeople live, is inside this area.
And that's another fun Christmas event thathappens in Christmas Lake Village. It
(13:37):
is a gated community, so you'renot just allowed to drive in there and
check things out. But at Christmastime they open up for two nights during
the Christmas season for their Festival ofLights. It's nine miles of very festively
decorated houses that you can drive throughand see people go all out. The
(13:58):
different neighborhoods will sometimes do themes,so every house in a certain area will
have let's say a Grinch theme orsomething like that. It's it's really something
to see. I heard it actuallyhappened just this past weekend, and I
heard that there were there was somuch traffic. I believe some people were
(14:18):
saying it took almost an hour toget through those nine miles houses. Because
there's a lot to see and alot of people want to see it.
That would be I'm sure the kidswould really like to drive through there and
see that. Dude, that soundsreally neat for sure. I know my
kids would like that. I canremember doing it as a kid myself,
so it's it's definitely something that isabsolutely an all ages event. Kids and
(14:39):
kids at heart both will enjoy it. That's cool. I always love going
out and doing that. That's likea tradition, and it sounds like that's
a great place to do that.That's awesome. It really is. Obviously,
this town also has another major thingin it. It's holiday world splashing
so far, I think is howit's actually phrased. Now, Yes,
it was named what Santa claus Landit was. Yes, it was called
(15:01):
Santa claus Land when it originally openedin August of nineteen forty six, and
it was actually the first themed amusementpark. We actually beat Disney by I
think a year or two. Thisis like known as the world's first theme
park per se. That just blowsmy mind. And of course it's very
(15:24):
different now than it was back then. Back then they had a house of
dolls, and I think probably themost exciting ride you might find would have
been like say, a Merry GoRound. And now it's all about the
award winning roller coasters and amazing waterparks. So very different, but still
just as much loved. I think. Yeah, but this is obviously a
(15:48):
pretty cool theme park gone up andabove for the water park as well on
it. Yeah, it's well noted. Also, like you said, it's
the first, but it also haslike a roller coaster there. I believe
that is like world famous. It'slike or the number one wooden roller coaster
roller gets voted or something. SoI'm trying, I'm trying to remember what
that's it has several several of theirroller coasters have won awards. They've got
(16:11):
I think they have of their oftheir roller coasters, two or three of
them are the wooden roller coasters.I think there's I think there's only maybe
twenty or soul wooden roller I wasjust reading something about this not too long
ago. There are not that manywooden roller coasters in the entire country,
and yet Holiday World that's several ofthem. And I think true roller coaster
(16:34):
enthusiasts, I think wooden roller coastersare typically the thing that they love.
But they don't just have the woodenroller coasters. They also have the Thunderbird,
which is one of the it's thewhat the winged roller coaster where you're
so they have they have a varietyof things, and then in the water
(16:55):
park they actually have the I believeit's the world's launched water coaster where it
actually launches you into this ride.That was I think that was the new
water park edition in twenty twenty,I believe. Yeah, so the Vote
it's called the Voyager, that's thewind roll coaster. It's called okay,
the Voyage. Yes, that's athat is an amazing wooden roller coaster.
(17:21):
So it also looks like that.And when I had asked people about this,
I don't know if this is stillthe case or not. So when
I talked about this town and whenHoliday World is brought up. They all
were like, oh, they dofree soft drinks there. They do free
drinks there. Like everybody I talkedto is like, they do free drinks
there. I don't know if theystill do, but I was like,
wow, usually you gotta pay liketen dollars for a coke at an amusement
(17:41):
park. So that was pretty coolexactly, And they do still do that.
They do the free drinks throughout thepark. They have free parking,
free Wi Fi, and the freedrinks are the very, very big selling
points of this park because, likeyou said, you go to a theme
park and you expect I mean notonly does the admission, you know,
(18:02):
you have to fork out that admissionjust to get a drink a soda.
You're looking at a pretty fair,you know, pretty hefty price tag.
But you're not going to find thatat Holiday World. That's They've got the
drink stations located through I believe theycall them oasis throughout throughout the park,
and there is no limit on those. And on a hot day, that's
(18:25):
a really good thing to have.That's the thing about Indiana. It can
get crazy hot, it can be, but particularly like being down there by
the Ohio River, I feel likeit's more humid, it's more hot,
like in the summer, So thatis definitely a really good selling point.
We've we've got that unpredictable Indiana weathertoo, where it can be just blistering
(18:45):
hot one day and then not somuch the next day. But yeah,
the summers can be pretty brutal.So yeah, the free beverage is definitely
a good thing for sure. Sosome other things I thought were inner esting
about this town. It's notable forJay Cutler, quarterback in fl And then
(19:07):
it's also had a cool stuff likeit was involved in like a national campaign
for Coca Cola's Christmas project called Santa'sForgotten Letters in twenty ten. I thought
that was really cool. Uh,that's not something obviously that was before my
time here at the Visitors Bureau,But I'm not at all surprised this town
gets a lot of national attention.Yeah, no, and I can see
(19:29):
why, right, because then Iread that it's one of the twenty eleven
it was named like one of Forbes'stop Christmas destinations in the world. Obviously
at Santa Claus is name of thetown, but I thought that was pretty
cool as well. So it's it'sknown beyond just Indiana per se. It's
this is known, it is,but we're constantly being discovered too. We
are just about we're less than tenmiles off of Interstate sixty four, and
(19:53):
I mentioned earlier that we're about seventymiles west of Louisville and kind of situated
between Evansville, Indiana and Louisville.So there's a lot of travelers that see
signs on the interstate for Santa Claus, Indiana. They had no idea that
this place existed. So we getparticularly here at the Visitors Bureau office because
we are the visitor information center.They stop in. We're their first stop.
(20:18):
They say, tell us about thisplace. We didn't even know it
existed, and we saw the signand we just had to stop because how
can you see a sign that saysSanta Claus and not stop in to see
what it's about. So it's asmuch as we love the people that are
familiar with us and come to visityear after year after year, I kind
of love those people that stumble uponus even more because then we kind of
(20:40):
get to introduce them to this place. It takes you back to the days
where the internet wasn't really a thingor as much. Right, well,
you had to literally stumble across things. You tend to think that people are
so plugged in now that nothing isreally undiscovered, But there's still apparently things
to discover, and I guess we'reone of them. Oh, what else
(21:00):
did I see? Lifetime movie?A Lifetime movie was filmed there snowed in
Christmas. Man, I love mesome Lifetime television movie. So that was
pretty cool when I saw that.Before your time, though, our name
has been used in a couple ofmovies, and sometimes people come here expecting
to see what they saw in themovie. And I don't want to say
(21:22):
they're disappointed, because you're never disappointedwhen you come here, but it's funny
what they expect. Apparently a fewyears back, there was I believe it
was a commercial for radio Shack andthey mentioned I think that it was called
Rudolph's Diner that was supposedly in SantaClaus, Indiana. We still get people
coming here asking where Rudolph's Diner is. There was never a Rudolph's Diner here,
(21:45):
so we have to have to quicklyput that to rest. But just
this year, I think it's theeither the USPS or UPS mentioned name drops
Santa Claus, Indiana in one oftheir ads this year, so we get
we get a lot of mentions likethat, but you know, come see
us firsthand, so you can seeexactly what the town's about. Don't don't
(22:07):
trust the Lifetimes. I don't remember. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have
to watch it. You know,it's probably got some crazy twist, right,
like there's a bad husband or ababysitter or something in this snowy little
town. I don't know. Ithink in the movie they claim that our
town has an airport. Yeah,not quite. But when you get outside
(22:29):
of the town, really, andit's the biggest town in the county,
right, I believe. I believeit is. The rock Port is technically
the county seat, and it isnot very big. So that just tells
you how rural and small part ofIndiana this is. It's not like where
I'm at, right, I'm nearto the capital. Right, there's more
people in my neighborhood than there isin that town, exactly, exactly.
(22:52):
Yes, it's a different life ofliving, living of life, however you
want to phrase it. And Ithink it's pretty cool, just for people
to go down there and check out, because the south part of the state
has a bunch of cool stuff thatdoesn't always get as much attention as like
Central Indiana North exactly. So Ialways love learning about things in southern Indiana.
What are some other things there aboutthe town that we haven't covered that
(23:12):
you think are really neat cool.Well, not about the town of Santa
Claus, but just five miles downthe road, we have a national park
and a state park dedicated to AbrahamLincoln because he spent fourteen years of his
life here, and they were fourteenrather formative years. His family moved here
at the age of seven, andthey didn't move away until he was twenty
(23:33):
one, so a lot of thingshappened. That his mother passed away while
they lived here. Her grave siteis actually at our National Park. He
developed his love of reading and learninghere, and really, you know,
he kind of probably the building blocksof what eventually turned him into a great
statesman were first. You know,we're first happened here. So we always
(23:56):
say that we're known for a probablybest known for a couple of most famous
bearded guys, Santa and Abraham Lincolnand that's that really is very true because
literally just five minutes down the roadis the abs stomping grounds from when he
was you know, a child andyoung adult. So I think that's a
that's a very interesting thing. Youknow, people come here for the obviously
(24:19):
if they come to the town ofSanta Claus or this area at all,
Santa Christmas holiday world, that's definitelya draw. But we've also got that
absolutely rich history with Abraham Lincoln righthere, you know, just five minutes
away. Awesome. This has beena fun conversation, and of course in
the show notes I'll put everything aboutthe Visitors Bureau and to check that out.
(24:42):
I do appreciate you taking the timeto do this because I think this
is one of those things because obviouslypeople listen to this podcast are mostly from
Indiana, even though some are fromall around the world, which is kind
of weird to me. But nevertheless, if you're in this day or around,
I think it's something you should checkout. Maybe just beyond the holiday
world that we're all used to,maybe maybe go into the town of Santa
Claus and give it a good lookingand this Christmas light thing at the Christmas
(25:07):
Lake Village sounds super cool to me, so it absolutely is. You put
it on your calendar for next year, Karen. I really do appreciate you
taking the time to do this.I know it was kind of thrown on
you, and you've done a fantasticjob. You might have a full time
career ahead of you in some sortof audio or television. I don't know
what do you think. I wouldn'tgo that far, but I appreciate it.
(25:30):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Indiana Stories. If you like
what you heard, you can goto Indiana Stories dot com for more episodes
and other stories relating to Indiana.Also, if you're enjoying this podcast,
there's several things you can follow,the podcast itself, the newsletter, and
various other things. Thanks again forlistening, and we will be back with
another episode, and I hope youjoin us for another Indiana Story, Going
(26:00):
back, going back, And thequestion is do I stay here? Will
(26:22):
you be back? Are you gonnacome back? Will you be back?
Are you coming back? Jeff CountingMedia b
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