New Harmony

I think that taking the trip to New Harmony was the best way that we could have ended this year throughout which we have been discussing utopias and dystopias. Over the years and to the current day, New Harmony has been the site of three different sets of utopias. It began as a religious community, with its members striving to prepare themselves for the end of the world. In this religious community, which was inhabited by the Harmonists, all people worked for the betterment of the town with a Protestant work ethic. Eventually the Harmonists sold the land in Indiana and moved to their colonies in Pennsylvania. New Harmony was then bought by Robert Owen and William Maclure, beginning what is known in the town as the Owen period. At this point, New Harmony became a scientific utopia, with researchers from across the country and the world, especially geologists, coming to Indiana in order to live in a social utopia and work in a scientific community with the greatest of their peers. The scientific community eventually dispersed, leaving what I consider to be New Harmony’s third type of utopia: the “small town utopia.” With under a thousand residents in New Harmony, it is the definition of a small town. Just judging from our tour guide, it seemed like it was a town in which everyone knew everyone else that lived there. At numerous times during our tour, the guide would stop, point out a car, and say who it belonged to and something about that person. New Harmony is also very connected to its past, as could be expected from a town with such a rich history. Going through the town, it is possible to see houses built from different time periods and architectural styles sitting right next to each other. Also, as the members of our group came to know very well, New Harmony has many antique shops, showing yet another connection to the past. Though it has never been known as the One State and the firemen in the town still put out fires, the trip to New Harmony could not have been more relevant to the topics that we have discussed this year, and it was a great way to close out the year.