Bedford (4,200) Built 1924
March 25, 2026
Lawrence County. In the Indiana high school basketball world it's always stood out to me as a unique, almost spiritual place, especially when it comes to gyms. It may just be the Damon Bailey effect, but I think it goes deeper than that. It's not just that so many old high schools consolidated into only two active schools (that's fairly common), it's that so many of those school's old gyms survived for such a long time. Needmore, Marshall Township, and Fayetteville are the only ones that have been gone for a long time as far as I can tell. Huron survived until about ten years ago. We've already covered Mitchell. Oolitic stood relatively untouched for a long time, but today it serves as the garage for an HVAC company. Tunnelton was left for dead, but a family has revived it as part of their home. Springville partially burned, but it's being restored with great care by a wonderful community group. Shawswick and Heltonville are in fantastic shape and I'll be writing about them both soon. Williams is the biggest mystery. I've photographed it from the outside but cannot find anyone who seems to know the current state of the gym on the inside. That leaves just one we haven't mentioned, the granddaddy of them all. The one that hosted decades of sectionals. The one with maybe the greatest balcony of all time. The one that was synonymous with Lawrence County basketball for years before Damon Bailey came on the scene. The one known by one name: The Quarry.
I remember first reading about The Quarry in Bedford in Kyle Neddenriep's Historic Hoosier Gyms. Unlike other gyms in the book, this one didn't stick out to me right away as anything crazy. The picture didn't show much, and though he mentioned that all the original seats were taken out a long time ago, I didn't look into it anymore at the time. I think it was when I started researching some of the other gyms in the county that I came across some old pictures of The Quarry that just blew me away. Then I started reading more of the stories people told about their experiences in the gym. The sectional crowds that would sell out despite being held in one of the biggest gyms in southern Indiana, leaving hundreds of angry patrons yelling outside in the cold. The way they would squeeze probably closer to 5,000 than 4,000 people into the gym for the biggest games. The way the balcony would shake and sway under the stomping feet of the crazed Stonecutter fans. How you could always look at certain seats in the gym and see the same person sittiing in the exact spot, at every single game for years and sometimes decades on end. Those stories brought the incredible pictures to life, and I just knew I had to get there. I knew the gym in its current state was a shell of its former self, but it didn't matter. I just wanted to get inside it and see if I could get a whiff of the energy that used to inhabit it. The Stonecutters (an all-time mascot name) played here for 50 years before consolidating with all the county schools I mentioned earlier (except Huron) to form Bedford North Lawrence. In that time they won 32 sectionals, 18 regionals, and made 2 trips to Indianapolis for the state finals in 1938 and 1943. Yes they were the big school, but they dominated just like they were expected to. Over my spring break I did a big tour of the old Lawrence County gyms and I finally made it inside. People from the area completely dismiss it nowadays because it's just a whisp of what it used to be, and I totally get it. If I got to experience it in its glory days, I probably wouldn't be very impressed with it nowadays either. But I wasn't around back then, and this was a moment I had looked forward to for a long time. I don't think there was any way it was going to let me down.
The closest thing I can compare The Quarry to is probably the old Nachand Fieldhouse down in Jeffersonville. It's not a one-to-one comparison, but if you look at old photos of both you can certainly see the similarities. The Quarry has entrances in all four corners of the gym. Originally there were about 15 rows of permanent bleachers on all four sides of the lower level. There may have been a few less along the baselines, it's kind of hard to tell. While I'm sure those old bleachers were sweet and the sightlines amazing, the upper level is really what set Bedford apart. Up in the balcony were about 6 more rows of permanent bleachers. They went around the court on all four sides, which as very rare for a balcony. If that wasn't cool enough, there used to be huge arched windows along all the walls of the gym that started below the balcony and finished above it. It made the balcony look like it was floating in the air, with natural light streaming in majestically from behind it. The old pictures look amazing, and I'm sure they barely even do it justice for the people fortunate enough to have seen it in real time back in the day. Signs used to hang from the balcony indicating seating sections and old-timey scoreboards sat up above it. I'm not going to pretend that walking around the gym magically took me back to those times, but seeing the pictures while standing in the gym at least helped me imagine it in a real way. It also created a pang of longing in my chest that took me a little while to shake.
Today you can fit significantly fewer spectators in The Quarry than you could 50 years ago. All of the original permanent seating is gone, every bit of it. The balcony has completely disappeared. I understand wanting more space for P.E. classes (the gym is used by the middle school now), but this feels a bit excessive. The only seating in the gym is 15 rows of retractable wooden bleachers along one sideline. Above those bleachers, the beautiful windows have long since been blocked in. Mercifully some of the windows behind the baselines were left intact. There is a small mural of the killer old Stonecutter logo up above the bleachers which is really neat. The opposite sideline has had a big room built out over where the old bleachers used to be. Behind one baseline is a workout area and behind the other is just empty space. The windows that are still in place were letting in a lot of natural light on the day I visited which gave it a little more charm at least. Today the hardwood floor is trimmed in red, and a simple big red "B" sits at center court. Looking up into the corners of the gym, you can notice little embellishments on the brickwork indicating where parts of the balcony used to be attached.
As if the old pictures hanging on the wall inside one of the entrances weren't cool enough, the original blueprints hanging next to them were next level. They show how the entire building was designed inside and out. I'm sure building something like this back in the 20s was a huge undertaking. I'm also sure the community had to be unbelievably proud of it when it was done. The Quarry (and Stonecutters) obviously gets its name from what Bedford is most known for: limestone. It's been shipped from this area all over the country for well over a century. It's also what this gym is built out of. You won't find a firmer foundation anywhere else. It's the same foundation that Lawrence County basketball has stood on since the early-1900s. Like I said, Lawrence County has always felt different when I think about the gyms that have been preserved down here and the traditions that they all carry. Those traditions transcend just one period of time. They're embedded in the towns and people who established them and lived them out. When I rank the gyms on this site, I always try and base those rankings off of what the gyms looked like at their peak. That's tough when you're staring at something that doesn't look like it did 50 years ago, but I always do my best. If people just look at the surface-level modern-day pictures here, they'll probably be confused as to why I have this place ranked so high. If they dig a little deeper and take a look at the foundation, I think they'll understand.
