Home Buying

You can buy the town of Story, Indiana, for $3.8 million

Former residents’ homes are now guest houses, the old general store is a popular restaurant, and the big barn is a wedding venue.

The town of Story, Ind., is 17 acres of 19th-century history. Michelle Pemberton

June 13, 2019

Why just buy a house when you can get a whole town? Loaded with preserved 19th-century history in the middle of America’s heartland, Story, Ind., is for sale for $3,800,000, TopTenRealEstateDeals.com reports.

President Millard Filmore granted 173 acres of land to Dr. George P. Story in 1851. Story developed the town on 17 acres into a thriving community, which eventually fell on hard times because of railroad expansion, new highways, and the Great Depression. Today, it attracts tourists from nearby Indianapolis, Louisville, Ky., and Cincinnati for its gourmet farm-to-table restaurant, general store, bed-and-breakfast, saw and grain mills, and neighboring 15,776-acre Brown County State Park

When the state government started buying up farmland around the time of the Great Depression, people left the area in droves. The general store, however, kept the town viable until 1950 and continued to stay open with diminishing trade through the 1970s. Since 1978, the town has had two owners. Today, former residents’ homes have been turned into guest houses, the old general store is now a popular restaurant with creaky wooden floors and a pot-bellied stove, and the big barn is a wedding venue.

Christopher Cockerham of Bloomington Realtors in Bloomington, Ind., is the listing agent.

See more photos of the Story Inn below:

story, indiana

Story-Inn-Indiana — . *Michelle Pemberton*

1 of 7

Subscribe to the Globe’s free real estate newsletter — our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design — at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @globehomes.