From the Files of the Kosciusko County Historical Society

Editor’s note: This is a retrospective article that runs a few times a month on InkFreeNews.

Information for this retrospective series is courtesy of the Kosciusko County Historical Society.

Oct. 1, 1984 — There were three major fires in the county over the weekend, and two are still under investigation.

Arson is believed to be the cause of a fire with an estimated $50,000 damage to a Syracuse apartment building Friday night. All occupants of the five apartments escaped unharmed.

In Warsaw, the National Structural Plastics Inc., near the 300 block of Argonne Road, was totally destroyed and four apartments in the Cost-A-Plenty complex were badly damaged early Sunday morning. No cause has been determined in the Argonne Road blaze, while sparks from a fireplace was the cause of the apartment complex fire.

No one was injured in either blaze.

Oct. 6, 1971 — A state biologist said today a band of pollution that has killed thousands upon thousands of fish in the Tippecanoe River along a stretch from Warsaw to beyond Rochester is no longer a threat.

John Winters of the State Health Department said the polluted strip has decreased enough in strength that it no longer is killing any fish.

The pollution was first noticed last Thursday and a state conservation officer, Richard Eurit, said it resulted when 127,000 gallons of chicken droppings were pumped from a damaged holding tank onto a field near Warsaw 500 feet from the river. The poultry farm was not identified.

Winters said the fishkill extended about 50 miles downstream from Warsaw. The slug of effluent cut off the supply of oxygen for fish.

Oct. 5, 1954 — The Kosciusko County Jail was listed as one of the best in Indiana by Charles G. Griffo in one of a series of articles appearing in the Indianapolis Star about sordid conditions of Indiana’s county jail system.

In the small jail category, Griffo said jails at Warsaw, Goshen, Huntington and Lebanon were singled out as among the few with high ratings.

– Compiled by InkFreeNews reporter Lasca Randels