Long story short, it has to do with hikers and free rocks.  Kinda.

Nashville, Indiana

Located in Brown County, Indiana sits the small town of Nashville, Indiana.  Nashville is well known for being a quaint town that many like to visit to “get away” from the real world.  Nashville is about 20 minutes from Bloomington, and is a beautiful place to visit, especially during the fall months when the leaves are changing.

Many love to visit the area because Brown County is also home to Brown County State Park, which is the largest of the Indiana State Parks, and has even been nicknamed the Little Smokies.  There are a lot of great places to hike around Brown County, and thanks to one of these hiking trails an unassuming barn has turned into a unique roadside attraction.

The Nashville Sock Barn

Now at first glance, a name like Sock Barn sounds like a place to buy socks, but trust us when we say you probably won’t want to take any of these old socks with you.  The Sock Barn is quite literally as described, a green barn, with socks pinned all over it, but why?

Take a Rock Leave a Sock

The Sock Barn started as a funny way for a couple to give away some geodes they had lying around.  Since their property was along a popular trail for hikers, they figured if they put the geodes out hikers might take them.  However, midwest hospitality took over, and no one would just take the geodes, so the couple decided to make a funny sign and thus the Sock Barn was born.

According to WDRB, Jessica Eiler and her husband own the property and this idea all started because they wanted to get rid of some rocks.

“It actually started because we had a huge abundance of geodes,” she explained. “You know, just really ugly bumpy rocks, but crack them with a hammer and there are some really pretty ones.”

The rocks dubbed the Easter eggs of the woods were piling up at a creek near Eiler’s house.

“We had totes after totes of them, and no idea what to do with them, so we decided we would give them to the hikers for free”

Of course, when the hikers wouldn’t take the rocks at first the couple put up a sign with a funny slogan “take a rock leave a sock”  and the rest is history.  If you want to visit the Sock Barn, you can Google “Nashville Indiana Sock Barn” and the address will pop right up for you.

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