City spotlight: Richmond.

• Author: Mogollan, Carlos David
• Position: Indiana town economic profile - Regional Report East

"One million roses, two mummies and a gorge"

Richmond: Gateway to the West, former lawnmower capital of the world, the place where roller skates were invented, the site of the first motion-picture show, a recording center for early jazz and once the home of more millionaires per capita and almost more factories than any other city in the United States.

No, it's not the Richmond in Virginia. It's Indiana's Richmond. The city of nearly 40,000 people lies nestled between the three northern forks of the Whitewater River off Interstate 70 and U.S. 40 on the Ohio border, 65 miles east of Indianapolis.

Richmond may be best known among out-of-towners as the home of Tom Raper RVs, which touts itself in regional television advertising as the largest recreational-vehicle dealer in the Midwest. But the city's tourism officials are fonder of promoting the city's "one million roses, two mummies and a gorge."

The reference is Hill Floral Products' distinction as the largest grower of greenhouse roses in the world, Egyptian mummies at Earlham College and the Wayne County Historical Museum, and the Whitewater River Valley Gorge--a natural geological impression running through the center of town that was created when glaciers pulled back at the end of the Ice Age.

It is to the gorge that the city owes its existence. Early settlers of the Hoosier state and pioneers heading farther west had to stop at the gorge to ford the river. The trading posts that spawned there became a thriving town and later an industrial center. The gorge also is one of the things to which Richmond looks for its future, as plans have been made to draw tourists there.

Garret Boone, a semi-retired artist in residence at Earlham, a local historian/environmentalist and a member of the city redevelopment commission, notes that plans for the Whitewater Valley Gorge State Park include an outdoor amphitheater, several miles of natural trails and a local manufacturing and invention museum.

"In this particular river valley going through Richmond, there were more mill sites than in any other place in the country at the time, other than Rochester, N.Y. There were more than 100, most of them clustered along the Whitewater Gorge," Boone says.

Among those was the Starr-Gennett Co., which employed more than 1,000 people making pianos, airplane parts during World War I, and refrigeration equipment and records after the war.

"With the advent of the recording industry, of which the Gennett Record Co. was...