What's In A Trail Name?

How often do you reflect on the name of a trail?  It might be just small print on a map or a trail side sign with some name of a hollow, valley, or tree species, but sometimes there will be an interesting backstory. One local Indianapolis trail has a namesake which goes beyond a mere geographic feature or grove of oak trees.

 

So, settle in for a quick history lesson. As can be seen from my previous posts, I ride at Fort Ben Harrison in Indianapolis quite often. The first trail that the HMBA built there is named Schoen Creek. Well, the namesake is easy enough, as there is a small creek which flows through the area the trail traverses. However, who is this Schoen? A comment on the HMBA forums a few years ago indicated that Schoen was actually a fighter pilot. This made sense, as I recalled when reading into the history of Indianapolis a few years ago a reference to an Army airfield near Fort Ben called Schoen Field which dated back to the pre-World War II era of the Army Air Corp.

Not long after this, I was riding around Crown Hill Cemetery when I caught this out of the corner of my eye:

And below the main marker was this:

Note, these photos were taken this week as I finally decided to stop and take a photo, more than two years after first spotting the marker. Anyway, this Karl Schoen looked to be from around the same time period as the airfield, so I did a bit of online research.

Turns out Karl Schoen was an Indianapolis native, born in October 1894.  He graduated from Purdue in 1917 and enlisted with the United States Army Air Service soon after, where he was commissioned as a lieutenant. He received flight training before being sent to the Western Front in France in February 1918 as part of the 139^th Aero Squadron. During his service, he shot down six German aircraft, although the final two were apparently claimed during a dog fight in which he too was shot down, resulting in his death.

The circumstances of his death was a thing of legend. A US soldier posted to an ammunition dump wrote to Schoen’s parents and described the low level dogfight which claimed his life. Apparently the Germans attacked the dump with three fighters and Schoen and a wingman engaged all three. One German fighter was shot down, as was Schoen’s wingman. He was outnumbered and outgunned, and as the fight neared an end, his aircraft’s machine gun jammed. The observer said that he could see Schoen then pull out his service revolver and continue to fire at the enemy aircraft.  Ultimately Schoen was hit and as his fighter went towards the ground, he continued to fire the pistol at the German aircraft.  The writer noted that when American forces arrived at the wreck sight to recover Schoen’s body, they found him still clutching the revolver.  In recognition of his fight that day, Schoen was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1919. For those who know Indianapolis, Lt. Schoen’s widow and 10 month old daughter actually lived at 5201 N. College Ave, the location of the present day Habig garden store.

Interestingly, the grave in the above photo at Crown Hill is not the final resting place for Lt. Schoen, but merely a marker, likely so he could be included along with the rest of the family. His remains are actually interred at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France, with many other American causalities from the first world war. Thanks to www.theaerodrome.com, here is his marker in France:

So, there you have it. The background behind the name of an airfield, a creek, and now a mountain bike trail. Only the creek and the trail survive. The airfield itself was little more than a grass field with several hangers, and was deactivated sometime around, or soon after, World War II. The US Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Center located on the southwest corner of E. 56^th St and Post Road in Lawrence Indiana now occupies that land.

Much of the information for this post came from Schoen’s page on Wikipedia and a page profiling him here. The full text of the letter from the ground observer may be accessed here, as it was printed in an article in the Indianapolis Star newspaper.