The Limberlost Cabin in Geneva, Indiana

Gene Stratton-Porter, an Indiana author born in eighteen sixty-three, made the Limberlost Cabin her home and creative sanctuary from eighteen ninety-five to nineteen thirteen. Per Atlas Obscura, the two-story fourteen-room home in Geneva, Indiana, became the setting for much of her prolific career — she wrote twenty-six books, many inspired by her explorations of nearby swamps and marshes. Three of her most celebrated novels, The Girl of the Limberlost, Laddie, and Freckles, were set directly in that landscape; she also documented her nature studies in volumes like Moths of the Limberlost and Birds of the Bible. Eight of her novels were adapted into films between nineteen seventeen and the nineteen forties, with the most recent being a nineteen ninety-two adaptation of Freckles. But the wetlands that fueled her imagination were drained for agricultural and commercial development, eventually prompting her to leave Geneva. Stratton-Porter moved on to Rome City, Indiana, and later to Los Angeles, where she continued writing and founded her own motion picture production company.

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