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1956 — the present
The turkey: The wild turkey of Muller's Cedar Creek farm was extirpated from Indiana by 1900 — S. E. Perkins III's 1930 Wilson Bulletin notes give the last reports as Knox County 1894 and Gibson County 1897, with the bird's last stand in Posey County. Restoration ran from 1956 to 2004: the DNR counts 2,795 wild-trapped turkeys released at 185 sites around the state. Turkeys are now found in all 92 counties, Allen among them — the bird that opens the county's first farm sketches closes the twentieth century as a statewide resident again.
The eagle: Indiana's last successful bald eagle nest of the old era was in 1897. The DNR's hacking program released 73 eaglets at Monroe Lake between 1985 and 1989; the first successful nests of the modern era came in 1991. Allen County's place in the sequence is dated by the DNR's own survey reporting: the statewide helicopter survey released in April 2010 — a then-record 119 occupied nests — reported, in the release's words, that "bald eagle nests were found by a survey in Allen, Adams, and Shelby counties for the first time ever." By 2020 Indiana held over 350 eagle nesting territories and the bird was removed from the state list of species of special concern. Fort Wayne's eagles are now city fixtures: the Little River Wetlands Project's Eagle Marsh is named for them, and in April 2024 the Journal Gazette photographed an eagle on its nest in a sycamore in Catholic Cemetery on Lake Avenue — a nesting pair inside the city, in a cemetery, in the newspaper.
The falcons: The peregrine falcon's Fort Wayne address is the top of the city's tallest building. Indiana's restoration program (1991–94) released 60 young falcons in Indianapolis, South Bend, Evansville, and Fort Wayne. Partners' accounts differ by a year on the nest box itself — Soarin' Hawk Raptor Rehab dates its installation atop One Summit Square to 1993; Indiana Michigan Power's 2013 account says the box was constructed in 1994 — and both are carried, since the birds settle the question that matters: peregrines were observed in 1995 without nesting, and the first successful nesting came in 1996, when Freedom, a two-year-old female from Evansville, and Bandit, a three-year-old male from Birmingham, Alabama, fledged two chicks, Orion and Amelia. Freedom stayed seventeen years and fledged 36 chicks before she was found dead downtown in 2013, aged nineteen. Her successors, Moxie and Jamie, took the box in 2013; I&M's 2024 history counts "almost 70 peregrine falcon chicks" hatched on the roof since 1996, watched worldwide on the Falcon Cam.
Sources:
- S. E. Perkins III, "Notes on the Wild Turkey in Indiana," The Wilson Bulletin 42(4) (1930); Indiana DNR, "Fish and Wildlife: Wild Turkey" (extirpation; 2,795 releases at 185 sites, 1956–2004; all 92 counties), in.gov.
- Indiana DNR, "Fish and Wildlife: Bald Eagle" (the 1897 last nest; the 1985–89 releases; 1991; the 2020 territories), in.gov; DNR release, "Bald eagles back home in Indiana in record numbers," 15 April 2010 (the first Allen County nest in the survey record), events.in.gov; Allen County Genealogical Society, "Bald Eagles of Allen County, Indiana" (the Lake Avenue cemetery nest, Journal Gazette, 2 April 2024), acgsi.org.
- Indiana Michigan Power, "History of Peregrine Falcons Celebrated as I&M Falcon Watch is Underway," 15 February 2024, and I&M release of 26 March 2013 (the 1994 box); Soarin' Hawk Raptor Rehab, nest-box history, March 2024 (the 1993 box; Freedom and Bandit; the 36 chicks), via the Society's birds page; Waynedale News, "Who Are The Highflyers Of Downtown Fort Wayne?," 14 March 2025 (the release cities and totals).