Dillsboro (1,826) Built 1957
March 24, 2026
A picture is worth a thousand words right? They can transport people back in time and allow them to feel and remember things they haven't in years. They provide a visual element that words can never quite capture. What happens though when there's a picture of something you weren't a part of? Then a picture by itself may actually need the help of a thousand words. There's a reason that pictures in museums have lengthy captions. They provide valuable context. After reading about when and where the picture was taken and the story behind it, the magic of the picture can be unlocked. Maybe not do the depths of a personal photo, but at least a vestige of it. Without that context, pictures can truly be a confounding mystery. It's frustrating to look at something that seems so full of life, yet you don't really know why. I encountered this at the last stop of my southeast Indiana gym hunt back in March. Hanging in the old Dillsboro High School gym that is now part of an elementary is a large framed picture. In it are some smiling young men and women, basketball players and cheerleaders. who look victorious. It's because they were! They had just captured the 1961 Rising Sun sectional. That's all the picture says: Sectional Champs, and then the names of the people in it. That's it though. I know it was a big moment for a small school, but that's really all I know. And the sad thing is, I want to know more.
Schools that have long been lost consolidation that won only one sectional have always seemed mystical to me. Most of these schools played 40-50 years in the state tournament. If you were a small school, you usually had to defeat the same county seat behometh every year in order to capture the sectional crown. As impossible of a task as that may have seemed to the general public, the players on those small town teams believed they could do it. They had to, otherwise they may as well have not shown up to the game. Even with supreme self-confidence, those teams usually fell short. Beating the big school and not faltering against 10+ other challengers was just unbelievably tough. This is why a sectional championship meant so much when a small school was able to break through, often for the only time. It's why players from those old shuttered rural schools say to this day they'd rather have won a one class sectional than a 1A state title (which is the predominant reason class basketball is so stupid). I'm sure members of the 1961 Dillsoboro Bulldogs would probably share that sentiment. Those are the players in that old picture hanging on the wall in the old gym. Those are the ones I want to learn more about, the ones whose story deserves to be told. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any trace of it. Online searches and old newspaper article queries have turned up nothing. I've been able to find a couple pictures of the old school that used to stand beside the gym, and that's it. So for now, all I have to go off is that picture, the faces looking back at me in it, and the old gym they played in.
Dillsboro High School had a pretty good run. They avoided consolidation until 1978, which is a lot longer than most small schools did back then. They then joined Aurora and Moores Hill to form South Dearborn. This gym was able to serve the high school for 20 years before it then transitioned to the elementary facility it serves today. I got to check it out on a day school was actually in session (though there was no P.E. that day) which was a first for me. It was kind of cool walking through another school other than my own that was teeming with life. While the school was very busy, the gym itself was quiet on this day. Today there are only seats along one sideline, 9 rows of newer dark blue plastic bleachers. Originally I'm sure these were the wooden variety, either permanent or retractable. Judging by how much open space is along the opposite sideline, I'm sure there used to be a matching set over there as well. Above those sideline bleachers used to be big rectangular windows which have long since been blocked in. The baseline wall which connects the gym to the school has a large stage surrounded by pretty red brick. The upper corners actually have stone squares with intricate designs carved into them. The stage doesn't have a curtain at the moment, but I was told the stage area was only recently cleaned out and they're hoping to put a new one up and utilize it again soon. The opposite baseline wall is bare except for a modern Dillsboro Elementary banner with the Bulldog logo on it. A similar logo is at center court and looks nice against the golden hardwood.
Some of the original character of the gym is hard to see now, but that's normal when these places have lived on as elementary gyms for as long as this one has. It's no one's fault, modern elementary schools have different needs than high school gyms did 70 years ago. There's still enough here to imagine what it would have been like in its prime. Maybe the neatest part other than the stage is right outside the gym in a little foyer opposite of where the rest of the school is. Here you'll find a couple of really nice display cases exhibiting memorabilia from the Dillsboro High school days. My favorites were a basketball from the sectional championship team and a picture of the original high school building that stood right outside of the modern school. They're touchstones to the past. They can't actually take me back in time, but I'll take what I can get. I walked past the 1961 sectional championship picture again on my way out of the gym and got one more good look at it. It may have been trying to say a thousand words to me, I just wish I could have heard more of them.
