Recognition for extraordinary accomplishment often is not punctually conferred.

Achievements by architect W. Homer Floyd and real estate developer Ben Blanchard, both former Terre Haute residents, are examples.

Between 1885 and 1920, Floyd was among Indiana's foremost architects. Anyone who remembers "Old Norm" on the Indiana State campus can attest to its charm. Floyd designed "Old Norm" to replace the original college destroyed by fire April 9, 1888.

Floyd was responsible for the L.B. Root and Herz downtown department stores, the new Filbeck Hotel, Erwin Block at the northeast corner of Fourth and Wabash, the Grand Opera House and Garfield High School. All have been razed.

Floyd also designed the attractive gateway and rest house adorning Terre Haute's Highland Lawn Cemetery.

Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library, now Fairbanks Hall at Indiana State University, was planned by Floyd for one of his best clients, Crawford Fairbanks.

Floyd contrived Fairbanks' residence at Fourth and Swan streets, superseded in the late 1930s by the Failey residence, and the Fairbanks-owned Tribune Building. Fairbanks hired Floyd to prepare blueprints for his massive Denison Hotel in Indianapolis and the French Lick Springs Hotel, which he co-owned with Thomas Taggart of Indianapolis.

Application is pending to place the French Lick Springs Hotel on the National Register of Historic Places.

In Chattanooga, Tenn., Floyd designed the Read Hotel and two bank buildings. At nearby Chickamauga, he planned the Park Hotel. In Butte, Mont., he is credited with the Florence and McDermott hotels.

A native of Evansville, William Homer Floyd was born Aug. 1, 1852. He attended the Collegiate Institute at Rockport for two years and became a contractor in Evansville while independently studying architecture and mechanical engineering.

He permanently located in Terre Haute in 1880. When each of his buildings was dedicated, he earned accolades, but recognition of the body of his work remains wanting.

Floyd died on July 30, 1929, at age 78, and is buried in Highland Lawn. Perhaps association with the French Lick Springs Hotel will attract national attention to his work.

For two decades Benjamin Blanchard earned frequent notoriety in the nation's newspapers. However, any favorable publicity he received was rarely sustained.

Blanchard founded new communities at South Hutchinson, Kan. (1886), Blanchard, Ariz. (1901), and Monarch, Nev. (1907), but acquired the reputation of being one of the slickest, likable, con men in the West.

Blanchard and Monarch became ghost towns after their progenitor -- the Rev. Ben Blanchard of Terre Haute, Ind. -- "disappeared and never returned." In one instance, several thousand dollars of investors' money may have vanished with him.

South Hutchinson and its older sister city, Hutchinson, continue to thrive. Their prosperity is largely linked to the largest pure rock salt strata in the Western Hemisphere.

That strata, which gave rise to that area's major industry including the Morton, Carey and Barton salt works, was discovered by Blanchard on Sept. 27, 1887. Its purity was confirmed by William Noyes of Rose Polytechnic Institute.

Seven successive weeks of this column in 2000 was devoted to the incomplete "Saga of Ben Blanchard." In the near future that epic will be supplemented by more fascinating exploits involving Ben before his death in Terre Haute on March 24, 1942.

For the time being, however, you should know that Reno County, Kan., is planning to establish the Kansas Underground Salt Museum 650 feet below the ground.

Museum organizers have solicited biographical information about Blanchard.

Located near the intersection of Kansas 50 and Yoder Road at Hutchinson, the proposed museum will include exhibitions on the history of salt mining; the use of the salt mines to secure the storage of documents and original film; and the transportation of salt. It is scheduled to open in late 2004 or early 2005.

Perhaps Ben will finally receive some positive public recognition for his important discovery. The location of Blanchard's first drilling site is identified but his name is notably absent from the plaque.

Robert Haury Gore, known as "Bob Gore Jr.," died March 19, 2002, in Sea Ranch Estates, Fla., at age 93.

Gore spent about 10 years of his childhood in Terre Haute when his father, Robert Hayes Gore, was editor of the Terre Haute Post and, subsequently, owned and managed publishing and insurance businesses here.

As a 16-year-old newsboy for the Terre Haute Post, Gore bought his first rare coin. By the time he retired in 1973 as president of the North America Co., a holding company for real estate, hotel, industrial and newspaper, radio and television assets accumulated by his father, he had one of the finest privately owned American numismatic collections in the U.S.

Beginning in 1974, Gore and his wife began distributing portions of the massive coin collection to the University of Notre Dame, Bob's alma mater.

An extensive Web site detailing the impressive Gore collection can be found at: www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin