Metamora, Indiana is open for business. On Sunday, October 4, my son Cameron and I drove over to see for ourselves, and we found a canal town full of music, food, and people.

I only heard the day before that the Canal Days Festival was still happening. Metamora was hit hard by flooding earlier this year, and I did not know what we would find. Cam and I decided to go and see how the town was doing.

The short answer: pretty good shape. Some businesses were lost, and the railroad has a long repair ahead. But the heart of the town is still there, and this weekend it was beating loud.

Seven weeks from underwater to open
The flood came in the early hours of August 13, 2026. The West Fork of the Whitewater River crested at a record 21.78 feet and pushed water through Connersville, Laurel, and Metamora. Railroad officials called it the worst flood on the line since the Great Flood of 1913.

Metamora did not sit still. Three weeks later, shopkeepers and residents rallied to hold the Labor Day Music Festival, with every shop that could open its doors doing so. Then they set their sights on Canal Days, October 2 through 4.

They made it. Not every storefront came back, and you can still see where the water went. But walking the canal on Sunday, what I noticed most was how much work a small town can get done in seven weeks.

Metamora, a town the canal built
Metamora owes its existence to a ditch. In 1836 Indiana approved money for the Whitewater Canal, a 76-mile waterway meant to link the Whitewater Valley to the Ohio River. Metamora was platted along its banks two years later, in 1838, and took its name from the title character of a popular stage play of the day.

For a few decades the canal carried grain, hogs, and passengers on mule-drawn boats. It was never an easy living. Floods tore out sections of the canal again and again, including a bad one in November 1847. By the 1860s a railroad had been laid along the old towpath, and the canal era was over.

What saved Metamora is that nobody tore it down. The canal, a working lock, and the brick and frame storefronts survived. Indiana took over a stretch of the canal in the 1940s, and it is now the Whitewater Canal State Historic Site. The town’s grist mill is the oldest one still operating in Indiana, and today the old buildings hold shops, galleries, and places to eat.

So a flood is nothing new here. This town has been washed out and rebuilt since before the Civil War.

The aqueduct came through
The best news in town is that the Duck Creek Aqueduct was not hurt. It is the only surviving covered wooden aqueduct in the United States, a bridge that carries the canal’s water right over the top of another creek.

It looks like a covered bridge, about 90 feet long, with an oak trough inside where the roadway would be. The first one was finished in the early 1840s and promptly washed away in a flood. The one standing today dates to 1846, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 2014.

It has now outlasted one more flood.

The railroad: a long road back, but still giving rides
The Whitewater Valley Railroad took the worst of it. The nonprofit heritage line has run excursion trains between Connersville and Metamora since 1974. The flood damaged nearly 16 of its 19 miles of track and swamped its locomotives, coaches, and shops. This year’s Polar Express has been canceled.

The word in town is that it will be one to two years before the tracks are repaired and the big trains roll into Metamora again.

But the railroad people would not let the weekend pass without a ride. Somehow they got their little track motorcars moved into town, and they were carrying passengers about two miles down the line and back. Cameron had a ball out on those tracks. Every ticket goes toward the rebuild, which makes it the best kind of train ride.

Canal Days: the biggest weekend of the year
Canal Days has filled Metamora on the first weekend of October for more than 50 years. It starts on the first Friday of the month and runs three days, 9 to 5.

It is part flea market, part craft fair, part fall festival. Antique and collectible dealers line Main Street and the canal, craftspeople set up in the Mill Park, and food vendors fill in everywhere else. The locals like to say that if you can’t find it at Canal Days, you don’t need it.

It also matters to the town’s future. Canal Days is the annual fundraiser for Historic Metamora, the group that looks after the town’s old buildings. In a year like this one, a good crowd is more than a good time. It is how the place gets back on its feet.

Ice cream for Cam, a stout for me
Every time Cam and I come to Metamora, we get hand-dipped ice cream at Grannie’s Cookie Jars & Ice Cream Parlor. No exceptions. The owners are some of the nicest people in the world, and it is Cam’s favorite place in town. Seeing it open and scooping was reason enough for the drive.

I found my own reward a little farther on. Creek Bottom Brewery from nearby Oldenburg, Indiana set up under a pavilion with live music and their beers on tap. Their barrel-aged imperial stout was fantastic. The owner and brewer, Steve Stahley, told me some great stories about his beer and his colorful past. A local brewery pouring for a town that needed a good weekend is exactly what craft beer is supposed to be.

Go see it for yourself
The best way to help Metamora is to show up and spend a little money. Buy the ice cream, ride the motorcar, pick up a bag of cornmeal at the mill. Canal Days comes back the first weekend of October every year, but the shops need visitors long before then.
Cam and I will be back. We always are.
Address: Main Street, Metamora, IN 47030
Website: metamoraindiana.com