Visitors ascending to the second floor of the Americana County Courthouse via the north Courthouse steps or by elevator or staircase from the first floor will discover one of the most important attractions to be found in all of Americana 1900. This is not a thrill ride or a coaster, but is an attraction that brings the history of America to life. This is “An American Journey,” a self-guided walk-through exhibit taking visitors through a dozen scenes from our nation’s past. This attraction occupies nearly the entire second floor of the Courthouse, and lets visitors witness first-hand some of the most important events of our nation’s rich history, from the advanced cultures of Native Americans to the year 1969. Guests view the Boston Tea Party, the printing of “Common Sense” (the political pamphlet that convinced so many American colonists to support independence from Great Britain), the completion of the transcontinental railroad with the “Golden Spike”, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech among a dozen other important events in our history.
The carefully researched recreations of these scenes, including the sounds and even the smells of the location, make this stroll through our nation’s history an inspirational and memorable American Journey.
THE CRYPT OF FIRE- A Story
The year was 1865. The Civil War, or The War Between the States as it was sometimes called, was over. The Americana County Courthouse, built in 1820, was gone, burned to the ground on September 19th, 1864 by a fire that started when a stray cannonball smashed through a window and shattered an oil lamp, igniting the fuel and setting the stately structure on fire. Only some crumbling brick walls and a single wooden column from the portico miraculously survived the conflagration.
The surrounding community didn’t escape this fate, either. Other rogue cannonballs, none of which were actually aimed at the town but that overshot their intended targets from a nearby inconsequential skirmish, hit other structures surrounding Courthouse Square, starting fires that soon leveled nearly everything in town. By the next morning Americana was just a smoking ruin, a collection of lonely chimneys and empty brick walls...and the single column of the Courthouse.
The Reconstruction Governor installed by the victorious Union forces appointed an acquaintance, a former law school professor by the name of Benjamin D. Wagner, as the Common Pleas Judge for Americana County until such time as the county and state were declared capable of establishing their own local government loyal to the United States. Judge Wagner had never before served as a judge, and had left his position as law professor under "questionable" circumstances, but his family was both wealthy and influential, and money talks- or can buy silence if needed.
What Judge Wagner lacked in judicial experience he more than made up for in greed, avarice and a total lack of basic human morals. He once boasted that he "never met a man he liked" and that he "never heard of an accused person who wasn't guilty of something." Judge Wagner, while corrupt to the core, was not stupid, and he knew that if he was to set himself up as the most powerful man in Americana County he was going to have to play the part of the "great rebuilder" of the county's judicial system.
He had the money to do it, and soon figured that if he spent a little bit of that money now he could soon be acquiring a vast amount of money, along with power and that thing he most desired- revenge. He hated the South and all who had fought for it- why has never been discovered. Maybe there was no reason- he was an evil person, and he was in a position to make the most of that evil inside him. Judge Wagner soon ordered the rebuilding of a new Americana County Courthouse on the site of the former courthouse. It would be a beautiful structure, three stories high and constructed of stone, with a tall dome rising from the center of the Courthouse, a fitting symbol of the reconstruction of the county- with Judge Wagner as its new de facto leader. He even provided much of the funding to finance this new edifice. “It is the least I could do to help the poor citizens of Americana County rebuild their lives,” he often told anyone who would listen. He was also a great actor, a talent that perhaps every corrupt politician must have. Nobody seemed to detect the malicious contempt hidden behind those words.
One change in the new Courthouse from the former one was that the County Jail would be located in the basement of the new building, deep under the new Courthouse to keep the law-abiding citizens safe from the "criminals, cut-throats and hooligans" who might disrupt the new-found peace that the Reconstruction government was going to bring to the county- under the “beneficent” leadership of Judge Wagner.
All seemed well at first. The new Courthouse rose rapidly, providing needed work and cash for many in the town and renewing a sense of civic pride in Americana County. No other county seat nearby was recovering as quickly from the effects of the war, and none had a Courthouse to compare with the beautiful new structure rising in the center of town. Nobody seemed concerned that only a select crew of workers from the Judge's hometown up north were allowed to work in the basement jail section of the building- few outside of the local workers even knew that the select crew existed, and those who did were “encouraged”- both by financial incentives and by the burley, dangerous-looking deputies that would keep the locals away from the jail section- to keep quiet, ignore what they saw and just do their job.
In a little more than a year the new Courthouse was finished, and all agreed that it was a magnificent structure. The dedication ceremonies were also magnificent, with inspiring rhetorical speeches, a band playing patriotic American songs, and tours of the new building- except for the jail in the basement. Residents marveled at the broad staircases, the spacious offices and the stately courtroom with its stained glass ceiling. No room, however, was more elegant or richly appointed than Judge Wagner's own office, tastefully adorned with the finest walnut furniture, desks and bookshelves. If it seemed a bit palatial to the average resident, they accepted it for the mere fact that Judge Wagner had paid for most of the building himself.
Little did they know that Judge Wagner fully intended to make a tidy return on his "investment" in this building and his position.
Life went on in the county, and things gradually settled down from the excitement of the reconstruction and dedication of the Courthouse. Crime was at an all-time low in the county, both because of the extremely efficient (bordering on ruthless) Sheriff that Judge Wagner had brought in (under authority granted him by the Reconstruction Governor of the State) and his band of equally efficient- and ruthless- Deputies, also from "up North", and from Judge Wagner's reputation as a judge who was not above using the maximum sentence allowed for anyone convicted of a crime. Judge Wagner was not about to let the "lawlessness and disrespect for the legal government" that he often inferred was the cause for the War to once again lead to civil unrest.
At first, nobody noticed that nearly all accused criminals were found guilty by Judge Wagner under his authority as a Reconstruction Judge who could pass sentence without the need of a jury if he felt that he could not find enough eligible citizens to serve. Conveniently, since many citizens of the county had sided with the Confederacy he felt that they had not yet proven their loyalty to the United States and therefore were not qualified to serve as jurors. The only accused people who were not found guilty were those who seemed to either have a service that the judge could use or access to considerable finances that were "donated" to some of the "relief charities" that the judge had established to help the "poor, indigent or feeble-minded of Americana County". The majority of those found guilty disappeared into the mysterious County Jail located under the Courthouse, a jail designed to be escape-proof, where the law-abiding citizens were assured that they were being "rehabilitated and taught the errors of their ways" and would soon be returned as law-abiding citizens to the community.
But somehow they never seemed to learn the errors of their ways. They never were rehabilitated. They never emerged from the confines of the jail back into the community. There were occasional reports that an especially difficult or malevolent criminal had been transferred out of the county jail to a state prison, but this was always done late at night so as not to "expose the citizens of Americana County to the sight of one of their own who had gone down the path of lawlessness and evil". The truth was that not one prisoner ever came out of the county jail able to tell about it, or to challenge it when the county government claimed their goods and property to “pay” for their “rehabilitation.”
The poor, indigent and feeble-minded people of Americana County gradually became fewer and fewer in number. It started quietly, and since these people were on the fringe of society and most of the "good, honest, hard-working citizens" made it a point to avoid them at best and ignore them at worst, nobody noticed their absence- or cared. Those few who did notice and did comment on it were soon paid a visit by one of the Sheriff's burley and always ill-tempered deputies, or by the Sheriff himself if they were of more importance to the community. These visits were always at night and were never announced, and after these visits, those who had noticed either stopped commenting about the disappearances altogether or suddenly were gone, along with their families and servants. An article in the local "Americana Tribune" might announce that a certain family had decided to pay an "extended visit to distant relatives up North", but nothing more was ever heard of them again.
The truth of what happened is almost too horrible to imagine. Judge Wagner had created a web of evil unknown in all but the most twisted of fabricated stories. He and his henchmen from up North found in Americana County a community in need of leadership- any leadership- and he provided them leadership that, on the surface, met their needs for a new Courthouse and a new sense of law, order and civic pride. He created a Courthouse to rival the most magnificent legal buildings in the nation. He returned law and order to the county, and eliminated the "riff-raff" and unpleasant people from society. If the "upstanding and law-abiding" people who remained chose to ignore what was happening around them, or were too stupid or scared to realize it, he decided that they deserved what they got, a totalitarian dictator who appeared to be benevolent on the surface but was cruel and violent underneath.
And the "underneath" was located in the basement of the Americana County Courthouse of 1865, in the County Jail, or as it was eventually called by those who discovered its true function, "The Crypt of Fire".
It was a torture chamber. There is no other way to describe it. It was designed by Judge Wagner himself, with the assistance of his Sheriff (whose name was never revealed- he was always simply referred to as "The Sheriff"). It was a place for Judge Wagner to rid himself of those who raised questions about his actions, who challenged him, who were a threat to him, real or perceived, or who simply annoyed him. He hated the poor, the indigent, the feeble-minded. He hated anyone smart enough or arrogant enough to wonder about his motives or actions. He hated everyone, tolerating only those who could provide him a service he desired or needed, or who could provide him funds to replenish what he had spent on this "playground of death" he had built for himself. Judge Wagner was the Devil himself, and he surrounded himself with like-minded "angels of death" whom he paid well and allowed to indulge in their own sadistic passions when he himself wasn't seeing to it that "justice”, especially his own unique brand of justice, was being served.
Some died quickly, almost mercifully. A gunshot to the head. A broken neck. Most, however, were used to satisfy the twisted, sadistic whims of the Judge or his evil minions. Torture devices developed centuries earlier were built and "improved" on by his team of "select workers" who built the Crypt of Fire to be completely soundproof and fitted out with room after room of these devices. The rack and the Iron Maiden were just some of the better-known implements of torture and death that were used. The methods of torture and death seemed endless, and the torturers relished in the creation of new and more horrible ways of ending the lives of their victims while prolonging the torture as long as possible.
The Crypt of Fire operated for nearly a year, unknown by all but those who worked there and died there. The bodies of those who perished in that chamber of horrors were disposed of in deep pits dug in the floor of the Crypt, where what little remained after the Judge and his henchmen were finished with them were covered with lime and dirt from other pits being dug by convicted soon-to-be victims, victims who were digging their own graves.
What happened “that night,” the night when it all fell apart, is still not totally clear. Perhaps a jailor was careless in locking a cell door and a prisoner escaped, overpowered him and freed those prisoners still alive. Perhaps a few townspeople, wise enough and brave enough to confront what they all came to know was happening but had been too afraid to face before, had entered the Courthouse through a carelessly unlocked door. Perhaps God Himself intervened. What is known is that the Judge was in his elegant private office that evening, supposedly working late but more likely enjoying the pleasures of one of the women of leisure who provided one of the "services" he desired and required. A commotion outside his office door alerted him that something was wrong, but when he attempted to leave to ascertain the cause of the commotion he found the door jammed closed and barricaded, and he could not open the door. The smell of smoke began to creep into the office, and he knew he had to escape, but even though the windows on his third-floor office would open, he had bars installed for security over the windows to prevent anyone from entering through them- or escaping. The only way out was down a secret narrow staircase he had installed that went down four flights of stairs to the basement of the Courthouse, leading directly to the Crypt. He raced down the stairs, hoping to then escape from the basement through one of the heavy security doors that led criminals into the Crypt but never out. Once in the Crypt, he found it deserted, with all of his evil henchmen dead and most of them strapped, tied or impaled on the very implements of torture that he had designed himself. The doors were locked and blockaded from the outside- he was trapped, and the smell of smoke was getting stronger.
The Courthouse was on fire- it is not known who started it or where, but even though the exterior walls were of brick and stone the interior walls and furnishings were wood, and gas lines for the gas lights ran through the walls. The entire building was soon engulfed in a raging inferno- all but the basement, the County Jail- the Crypt of Fire. It was ironically fireproof, with brick walls and stone ceiling, but as the fire raged overhead and the flaming contents of the Courthouse collapsed onto it, the stones and brick heated up, and Judge Wagner, the evil creature who had created the Crypt of Fire to be sound-proof and escape-proof, was himself trapped in it, and as he was slowly baked to death in a prison of his own creation the last thing he saw were the ghosts of the dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent victims he had condemned to horrible deaths coming to welcome him into his own personal hell, a Crypt of Fire where they were his jailors and he was about to spend eternity at their mercy, a mercy no more common than the mercy he showed them in life. Nobody outside of the Courthouse could hear him scream, and if they could have heard those screams, they would not know if they were screams of pain from the heat or screams of terror at the vision of his own hellish eternity that he was seeing.
It took several days for the fire to completely die out. All that was left standing were the charred outside stone walls, a few brick interior walls and what appeared to be a strange brick-enclosed staircase tower leading from what would have been Judge Wagner's office to the basement. The ceiling of the basement had not collapsed, even under the weight of tons of debris from the destroyed Courthouse above it, and as word of what was in the basement was revealed by the escaped survivors of the Crypt of Fire and spread throughout the town, it was decided to never again open the sealed basement torture chamber. The walls from the Courthouse, once the pride of the county, were pulled down and ground into gravel to use for road construction, and the scorched slab of stone that remained, a tombstone for so many citizens of Americana County, was covered over with soil. Attempts to plant grass on the site were fruitless for years. The dark joke around town was that the site was just too close to Hell to let the grass seed sprout- it was just "too hot for anything to grow." Finally, in the Spring of 1876, the Centennial of American Independence, the plot of dirt that for so many years had been nothing but a muddy field in the middle of town suddenly burst forth with life- lush green grass appeared first, then thousands of wildflowers sprouted and filled the center of the town with color and beauty. It was taken as a sign that the past horrors of the site had been mourned long enough, and that it was time to reclaim the site for the living. A church service conducted by all of the area churches was held on the site, a funeral for the dead and even an attempt at forgiveness for those who had caused this tragedy, and the new local government of Americana County announced that a new Courthouse would once again rise on the site, a Courthouse to rival the old one in beauty and would be seen as a guardian for the rights of all people. The basement would remain sealed, and a new County Jail would be built on the corner of Main and Jefferson Street, to symbolize that the law enforcement and the Judiciary branches of government, while always needing to be near each other, must be independent of each other.
The new Americana County Courthouse was dedicated on September 19, 1885, exactly twenty-one years to the day that the original Civil War era courthouse was destroyed. This was to show that Americana County had reached maturity, was taking charge of its own future, and that the horrors of those twenty-one years were over. Since then, Americana County has taken its place as a leader in the march for human rights and justice, as a prosperous home to thousands of proud Americans, and a place that refuses to let the tragedies of the past hold it back from a prosperous future for all.
