The rural settlement reached its peak in the years between 1880 and 1912, when major structures in the community included the railroad depot, a post office, a lumber mill, two general stores, two churches, and a school.

Most of its residents left for economic reasons, seeking opportunities for higher paying jobs and additional education in larger cities.

[4] Lyles Station is located in Patoka Township, Gibson County, Indiana,[5] at 38°22′13″N 87°39′33″W / 38.37028°N 87.65917°W / 38.37028; -87.65917, approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km) west of Princeton, in the southwestern part of the state.

[8] Two other black rural settlements were established nearby: Roundtree, north of Lyles Station, and Sand Hill, two miles south.

)[5] Numerous articles written about Joshua Lyles assert, without any evidentiary verification, that he was born a slave and freed when he was twenty-eight years old.

More recent scholarship citing archival records in Virginia, Tennessee, and Indiana provides documentation of family members' status as free persons.

[11] A reprint of an Indianapolis News article appearing in the Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel on July 26, 1902, may have initiated the information about Joshua Lyles being a freed slave.

[5][13] The other free black men listed as heads of households in the township's 1840 census were Nelson Bass, Joel Stewart, John A. Morland, Robert Cole, Banister Chaves, Thomas McDaniel, Isaac Williams, and Duke Anderson.

[14] Shortly after the Civil War, Joshua Lyles returned to Tennessee to encourage family friends, free blacks, and newly emancipated slaves to settle in Indiana.

[17] Lyles Station reached its peak in the years between 1880 and 1912, when major structures in the community included the railroad depot, a post office, a lumber mill, a school, two churches, and two general stores.

[5] Unusually heavy rains in the Midwest caused the White, Wabash, and Patoka Rivers to overflow their banks during the Great Flood of 1913.

[citation needed] Although most of Indiana's black rural settlements no longer exist as self-contained communities, Lyles Station continues.

[20][21] The National Museum of African American History and Culture, slated to open its new building in Washington, D.C., in 2016, plans to feature Lyles Station as part of its exhibition on black rural communities in the Midwest.

After decades of deterioration, fundraising efforts and additional grants provided the financial resources needed to restore the school building to serve as a community gathering place and museum.

[9] As of 2008 Wayman Chapel AME Church continued to hold regular Sunday services, with an average attendance of fifteen to twenty people.

[26] The Lyles Station train depot for the Louisville-Saint Louis Railroad line, a division of the Southern Railway, provided the community with access to a wider area.

The corporation chose two individuals noted as being experts in physical restoration to lead the project: Architect George Ridgway and contractor Jeffrrey Koester.