Adams cleared a plot of land, planted crop, and built a log cabin, after which he returned to Kentucky to bring his family to Indiana.

Not long after the move to his new home Reuben became sick and died in 1826, leaving his widow, Mary Adams to raise eleven children in the Indiana wilderness.

In 1834, Mary Adams had John H. Messinger lay out the town of New Bethel (the original name of Wanamaker) from a portion of her farmland.

[8] The Gallaudet name derives from the 350 acres of land having been originally owned by James Smedley Brown, once superintendent of the Indiana School for the Deaf.

Brown named the area in honor of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, one of the founders of the first permanent school for the deaf in the United States.

[9] The main thoroughfare in Wanamaker, Southeastern Avenue, runs over the original alignment of the historic Michigan Road.

[10] Since its founding, Wanamaker had been an unincorporated community of Marion County, located outside the city limits of Indianapolis.

In 1970, by an act of the Indiana General Assembly, Indianapolis was consolidated with the government of Marion County as Unigov.

The track has been closed for many years, but its remnants remain as a reminder of the days of small town racing circuits.

Since the late 1980s, community service organizations have been hosting Old Settler's Day, a street fair, in downtown Wanamaker.