Thousands road trip to buy antiques in Wayne County. Here’s why.

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An antique powerhouse in east central Indiana draws droves of collectors and hobbyists to furnish their homes, buy gifts and add to their collections.

Wayne County’s Antique Alley is a cluster of around 40 stores and 1,000 vendors selling antiques, vintage clothing and local products. It’s a significant pull for the rural area with people traveling from around the country and Canada to see what they can find.

The antique strip is populated with family-owned businesses — each having something that sets them apart from another, like a level of expertise in an item, a design touch for building window displays or an abundance of an item. One store owner says he specializes in “man-tiques.”

A key factor in what makes this arrangement work is the competition, but it’s not with each other. The business owners all know each other well and function as a community. They say the success of their own business relies on the success of the whole, of Antique Alley, since people will come for the collective of stores, not just one. But also, they treat each as their neighbors and support one another during hard times.

“If you all can’t work together, it’s not worth it anyway. It’s a business it’s not a bloodbath,” store owner Greg Darter said. “People aren’t going to come from one store, but they’ll come for multiple.”

Customers see that, said Nancy Sartain, Richmond leisure marketing director, and people want to buy items from local people who care about the product, and especially with antiques, tell the story behind it.

Antiques in the area are also significantly cheaper than elsewhere, several say, and is a reason why they often see folks from out of town fill trailers to take back home. License plates and register conversations currently give local business owners the best guess as to where their customers head in from.

Sartain said they don’t see the antique momentum slowing down anytime soon since there’s no replacing an in-store experience when it comes to antiques and there’s the fun in the hunt of what one can find.

“There’s something very magical about walking through,” she said. “I mean there’s just something that takes you back.”

Strong roots

The Richmond tourism department started advertising the collection of stores as a destination about 20 years ago. Sartain said they were re-evaluating what they have to market in the region and felt it was a missed opportunity not to capitalize on the impressive and growing number of antique stores.

Antiques have a long history in the region stretching back to the National Road when pioneers would stop and dump the things they no longer wanted to haul on their travels. Sartain said people started collecting what is now considered antiques back then, and the tradition compounded itself.

Julie Chance, who also works in the tourism department as a leisure market coordinator, said antiques are baked into her family. She grew up helping her mom, who was an antique buyer, which translated into her own love of the hunt.

“It kind of gets in your blood,” she said. “That’s why it always stays so strong here because they’re vital to us.”

One of the first and longest-standing stores in the region is Wheeler’s Antiques in Centerville. Sue Wheeler and her son, Scott, run the business, which has two storefronts across the street from each other. The joke is that Sue’s late husband said they could still be open for business if one side burned down.

The business has seen about everything within its walls. Scott oversees larger items as well as niche antiques like toys and records, while Sue accounts for everything else. They both say they buy everything.

She said she and her husband started the businesses because they were collectors, and eventually, they needed to offload their possessions. They began selling at shows before setting up shop in the small downtown. After 53 years, Sue, 89, still comes in every day to tell customers the stories of their items and parse through new finds. Scott says she’s pretty much bought and sold anything and everything.

“It’s changed a lot. Different clientele, different tastes and things,” Sue said. “But basically, it’s pretty much the same.”

The Wheelers are one of the mainstays in Antique Alley, seeing customers both locally and from across the country as well as finding antiques locally in house calls, auctions and other means. Sue said their region has different antiques than other places, mentioning pottery as an example, and is another draw. Everywhere has different items, she said, and things one won’t find anywhere else.

They emphasize local and quality in their store. Scott said being a family business and having relationships with customers instills an important trust. They note they have out-of-state customers who travel annually to shop with them as well as another who came back 25 years later because he remembered them.

Corridor makeup

The Richmond tourism department has organized two trails so people can have a roadmap to canvas the shops in a likely two-day pilgrimage. Included stores now stretch into Ohio, and Sartain said new stores in all directions are asking to join the local antique belt.

People don’t care about city, county or state lines, Sartain said. Instead, they care about what a region has to offer. In line with that, they work with other tourism departments to put more minds together to bolster the project.

Antique Alley’s “capital” would be Cambridge City, which has 11 antique shops in a two-block area as well as several restaurants downtown. Stops on the trail also include Richmond, Winchester, Union City, Centerville, Dublin Lewisville, Dunreith, Knightstown and Hagerstown in Indiana. Ohio towns include New Paris, Greenville, Arcanum, Verona and Lewisburg.

Norma Bertsch, owner of Building 125 in Cambridge City, specializes in American country and primitive antiques. She intertwines local products like candles and hickory furniture. Christmas shopping is a big season for them, she said, but people filter in throughout the whole year.

The area is blossoming, she said, and pointed out that younger families are moving to the area and starting their own restaurants and businesses.

Darter, owner of Shoppes of East Main Street in Hagerstown, said he often works with the owner of Willie & Red’s restaurant across the street. They work together to make the most of increased foot traffic; Thanksgiving is one of their best-selling days of the year for holiday shopping, and they are open when the restaurant has a big dinner.

Darter’s store features several large wood statement pieces of furniture surrounded by carefully placed floral arrangements and colorful antique decorations. He changes the store atmosphere for each season and goes all out for Christmas. His design experience, he says, helps better the customer experience and pair people with sites that go with the aesthetic they want in their home.

When people come visit, Sartain of course wants them to be lured by everything else the region has to offer. She mentions the history with museums, the site of an infamous jazz recording studio and a station of the underground railroad. She hopes people come back for the other guided tours including the Chocolate Trail.

Vintage revival

Two decades later, Sartain said they’ve seen a big difference in the region’s name recognition. On social media, that’s apparent as more young adult Hoosiers realize the treasure trove of antiques and one-of-a-kind items available to them within state lines.

Store owners all said they’ve noticed a trend of younger people coming through their doors and it’s helping the bottom line and longevity of business. She said some smaller towns are dying, but this area is fortunate not to be, and that’s cause for optimism.

“Young people are getting into antiques, and they’ll be buying antiques for a while,” Bertsch said. “There seems to be a momentum.”

Along with the expansive vintage clothing and thrifting wave, Homes and Gardens also reported the “Retro Revival” trend is growing more popular as consumers want a more timeless look to their home’s interior than the often cheaper “fast homeware” found in big box stores.

Darter said young people are seeing the value of bringing well-made furniture and antiques into their homes. This tide is noticeable with programming on HGTV, he said, and how people want something different than what the current trend is — something that lasts.

“You buy an antique, you invest in it,” Scott Wheeler said. “They’re better built than the stuff that you’ll buy in IKEA today.”

Wheeler said young people are gravitating back toward antiques as the way to go. They’re learning, he said; some have a familiarity because its something their grandparents had or grew up with. People should understand that just because something is old to you doesn’t mean it’s actually old, he said, and could have a lot of life left.

Antique stores serve as a liaison to move historic and storied items from one owner to the next. Wheeler said they are just looking to preserve these items to move on to the next person.

“We’re just saving it for someone else,” he said.