Country Music History

Buck Lake Ranch sits on 80 beautiful rolling acres just a few miles outside of Angola, Indiana. In its heyday as an outdoor country music park from 1947 into the 1970s, everyone who was anyone in country music, plus stars from Hollywood, television, jazz, and even sports entertained crowds numbering in the thousands from its rustic stage.

Harry Smythe and his wife Eleanor opened the park in 1947. They purchased the property from a farmer for its lake and proximity to the highway, built a fan-shaped stage of sawed timber and amphitheatre fashioned after the famous Hollywood Bowl, and turned their 80 acres into a hillbilly wonderland. In the years following World War II, hundreds of country music parks sprung up across the country, but Buck Lake Ranch was special right from the start.

On Saturday nights Fort Wayne’s WOWO “Hoosier Hop” was broadcast from the amphitheatre’s soundproof control room, but Sundays belonged to the families who packed picnic baskets with their lunch and dinner, and drove from miles around to escape from the ordinary and just have fun.

For a few dollars, a whole family could be entertained for the entire day. Admission was 50 cents, and kids under 10 were free. There were boat rides on the lake, a trout fishing pond, pony rides, a midway built like a small western town, carnival rides, a souvenir shop, a pioneer town educational exhibit, rodeos, wresting matches, square dances, a half million dollar historic automobile exhibit, rows and rows of skee ball machines, snack concessions, and a home cooking style restaurant. A steam powered train ride around the property included staged attacks by Indians and bands of outlaws, with lawmen arriving in the nick of time to save the day.

Then there was the entertainment… two to three shows a day featuring the biggest stars in country music and more!

Here’s a list of many of the stars who appeared during these years: Hank Williams Sr, the Carter Family, Tex Ritter, Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright, Skeeter Davis, Charlie Louvin, the Gold Dust Twins, Faron Young, Connie Smith, Marty Stuart, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, Roger Miller, Bill Anderson, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Lorne Green, Duke Ellington, Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, Tanya Tucker, the Three Stooges, Brenda Lee, Sonny James, Dottie West, Nancy Lee and the Hilltoppers, Louis Armstrong, Rex Allen, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Jimmy Dickens, Roy Acuff, Webb Pierce, Minnie Pearl, Rod Brasfield, the Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, Archie Campbell, Porter Wagoner, Tompall Glaser, Jean Shepard, Ferlin Husky, the Indiana Red Birds, Jimmy Dean, the Wilburn Brothers, Lulu Belle and Scotty, George Jones, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Grandpa Jones, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Johnny Horton, Cowboy Copas, Del Wood, Del Reeves, Leroy Van Dyke, Justin Tubb, Gabby Hayes, J.D. Sumner, the Blackwood Brothers, Merle Travis, Jim Reeves, Conway Twitty, Jan Howard, Justin Tubb, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Flatt and Scruggs, the Green Valley Boys, heavyweight champions Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis, Bill Haley, Mickey Rooney, PeeWee King, Carl Smith, Goldie Hill, Marty Robbins, Patsy Montana, Tammy Wynette, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Frankie Avalon, Homer and Jethro, Carl and Pearl Butler, George Hamilton IV, Martha Carson, the Cisco Kid, Michael Landon, Jimmy Martin, Crystal Gayle, Buddy Emmons, Bobby Bare, Stonewall Jackson, Roy Clark, Carl Perkins, Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis.

Award-winning journalist and writer Michael Van Buren, a longtime resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, first visited Buck Lake Ranch to see Merle Haggard in 1971 and fell in love with the place. Over the years, he watched as the property fell into disrepair, closed down, and was finally restored and reopened by current owner “Captain” Carl Unger. Mike's documentary is clearly a labor of love.

Buck Lake Ranch: Nashville of the North is a nostalgic journey from the park’s opening in 1947 through its glory days as a country music showplace, to its present day reincarnation as a family campground. Historic photos and film and audio clips from the past provide the background for memories recalled in interviews with Ray Price, Loretta Lynn, Don Helms, Little Jimmy Dickens, Bill Anderson, Marty Stuart, Connie Smith, Captain Carl, and Joe Taylor and Patty Corbett of Indiana Red Birds band, and others.

“Everybody came and sat for hours on the old hard wooden seats. And if it rained, they’d sit in the rain. It was unreal. That’s how much they liked it.” Ray Price (Country Music Hall of Fame)

“It was the kind of place you’d expect to hear a good country music show.” Don Helms (Steel guitar player for Hank Williams Sr., Ray Price, Ferlin Husky, the Wilburn Brothers, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams Jr.)

“You could mingle with your fans, your people.” Little Jimmy Dickens (Country Music Hall of Fame)

“I was always thankful when someone bought my dinner.” Loretta Lynn (Country Music Hall of Fame)

“Anywhere you’re that loved and accepted, you want to be.” Connie Smith (Grand Ole Opry)

To purchase this documentary DVD, go to Hank & Audrey's Corral