Wakarusa's Miniature Town at Bird's Eye

DeVon Rose turned Popsicle sticks, sawdust, and crates into a perfect replica of his hometown.

BY ALEC EVANS // SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

Imagine waking up one morning and stepping out onto your porch. View the trees in your yard with steel wire trunks and steel wool leaves, turn to see the toothpick window shutters, and look up to inspect the cereal box shingles. This might seem like a bizarre world to live in, but such a world exists not too far from South Bend. In the town of Wakarusa, this world exists and is known as “Bird's Eye”.

In the early 1960's, DeVon Rose bought his two sons, Garry and Terry, an electric train set to play with in the basement of their Wakarusa home. After his sons watched the train go round and round the tracks, they asked their father for some miniature buildings to go alongside the train.

Rose granted his sons' request and built them a miniature barn, taking inspiration from a building on their grandfather's farm just outside of Wakarusa.

His boys loved the new building, and local community members were impressed with the skill that Rose had to reproduce a familiar structure. They suggested to that he should enter his miniature to the Athena Club hobby show in Elkhart, a show that featured dozens of miniature models from members of the local community. Rose took their advice and impressively walked away with first prize.

In fact, he won this prize two years in a row.

With two wins from a hobby show and a knack for miniature making, Rose decided to continue building models of Wakarusa. His process for building started with the existing structure, by measuring every inch he could to ensure that it was to the correct proportions. Then, he would create the structures using common household items.

The buildings were made with old wooden crates, the siding from Popsicle sticks, and stucco surfaces made with sawdust and glue. His measuring process was not just to ensure each dimension was accurate, but that each minor detail was perfect. For example, one of the homes located in Wakarusa had a hole in the roof, so Rose made sure that his model looked exactly the same.

“I don't care how long it takes”, Rose said in an article published in the South Bend Tribune in 1999. “The main thing is I want it to look right when I'm done.”

There was also an aspect of timeliness on Rose's part due to the fact that certain structures would be soon torn down as he was modeling them. One instance of demolished structures was because of natural disasters, like a tornado that ripped through the town in the 1960s. Rose rushed to measure what he could of the structure before it was lost forever.

After decades of craftsmanship, Rose created each structure found in the town of Wakarusa in 1965. The original barn model Rose created took up a small section of a table, but when Rose was finished with modeling the town, it took up the entire space of his two rooms located in his basement.

Rose was not finished with miniature creation however. He turned his interest to the historical structures of Elkhart county. Places such as the St. Vincent DePaul's Catholic Church in Elkhart, the Ruthmere Museum in Elkhart, and the Steuben County court house in Angola, just to name a few.

Afterwards, Rose began modeling famous structures all across Indiana, going as far south as Harrison county which borders Kentucky. In total, Rose spent over 4,000 hours constructing these miniatures, and all of that came from one simple request that his sons made several years prior.

Rose donated several buildings to their respective towns over the years, but before his death in 2011 he donated the entire collection to the Wakarusa Historical Museum where it still remains today.

There are many ways in which to preserve history. t is an important task to not only remember where you've been, but to let future generations remember where you were. Photographs, drawings, and literature are great ways to do this, but Rose did it in a unique way: by creating a model. His task of making a toy for his kids turned into a hidden talent that impressed those around him and preserved the memories of the great town of Wakarusa.

If you want to see this model town for yourself, head to the Wakarusa Historical Museum where it is situated in its own building behind the other museum attractions. It is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM, and located at 403 Wabash Ave. It is truly a treat to view it in person.

Alec Evans is a writer and lived his entire life in Mishawaka. He earned his bachelor's degree in communications from Valparaiso University and works as a Marketing Director.