For sixty years, Morse Reservoir has worked the same way for everyone who didn't grow up with a dock behind their house: you could look at it, you could drive over it on the Jackson Street causeway, and you could pay to launch a boat if you knew someone with a ramp key. Ninety-five percent of the shoreline belongs to homes, according to the Indianapolis Encyclopedia's history of the reservoir, which leaves a 1,500-acre lake with almost no room for anyone who isn't already living on it.
This year that math changed, and it changed specifically at Red Bridge Park in downtown Cicero.
The Lake Used To Be Something You Drove Past
Before this year, the reservoir had exactly two places where the public could get to the water for free. Red Bridge Park sits on the Cicero side, with a marina, a pool and walking paths. Morse Park and Beach sits on the Noblesville side, leased to Hamilton County Parks and Recreation since 1972, with swimming, fishing and a disc golf course. Both are useful. Neither one made it especially easy for someone without their own kayak rack, trailer or lake-savvy friend to actually get on the water. If you didn't own a boat and didn't know a neighbor with a dock, the reservoir mostly stayed scenery.
What Cicero Built At Red Bridge Park This Year
The town spent this year closing that gap. Cicero Parks added a new fishing pier at Red Bridge Park, then followed it with two canoe and kayak launches. One of those launches is fully accessible, with a transfer bench and slide boards, and Cicero Parks superintendent Charlie Cambre has said it's the first launch of its kind anywhere in Central Indiana. The park district crowdfunded part of the project through the state's CreatINg Places program, pulling in more than $9,000 in community donations with most of it matched by the state, and the pier itself drew support from a place-based investment fund run jointly by the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs and the Indiana Office of Tourism Development.
The town named the whole stretch of shoreline Charlie's Landing, after Cambre's years running the parks department.
"It's really creating another gathering place for community members to come to and celebrate what we have to offer," said Shae Kmicikewycz, Cicero's community development coordinator, describing the pier as a venue the town expects to host everything from fishing days to weddings.
That's not just civic language. The pier already anchors the annual Kids Fish Free Day, and the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana holds its watersports event there every year. The accessible launch means that event now has an actual way into the water for participants who couldn't use the old, unimproved bank.
The Park Calendar Right Now
If you live near Red Bridge Park, the next few weeks give you two reasons to show up beyond a normal Saturday paddle:
- Cicero Summer Festival — Saturday, August 22, at Cicero Community Park
- Red Bridge Park Car Show and Craft Fair — Monday, September 7, at Red Bridge Park
Both are run through Cicero Friends of the Park, the volunteer group that also organizes the town's smaller recurring events, from spring bingo nights to the October haunted trail. The car show and craft fair in particular tends to spill across the same lawn where the new pier now sits, so this year's version puts craft vendors and classic cars within a short walk of the launch for the first time.
Jackson Street Turned Over In About A Year
The waterfront upgrade didn't happen in isolation. Downtown Cicero's restaurant row along West Jackson Street has changed almost as much as the park has, and on roughly the same timeline.
Red Bridge Bistro opened at 109 West Jackson Street in the summer of 2025. General manager Tom Paris, who moved his family back to Indiana and was pitched the concept by a childhood friend, built a menu he describes as upscale gastropub with an approachable price point. The fried deviled eggs and the pot roast slider, made from chuck roast braised for four and a half hours in its own jus, are the two dishes he points to as proof the kitchen isn't playing it safe.
A few blocks away, DeLullo's Trattoria relocated to 230 West Jackson Street this spring after years running a farm-to-table Italian kitchen in the small town of Atlanta, Indiana. Owner and chef Kay DeLullo has said the move gave her the same loyal following in a bigger space, with the restaurant now open Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m.
Both newcomers joined a downtown that already had two anchors worth knowing. Boathouse Kitchen and Swan Dive sits right on the northern shoreline between State Road 31 and State Road 37, serving what it calls lake food with a humble heart, and it's the closest thing Cicero has to a restaurant you can walk to straight from a boat slip. Ten West Restaurant and Bar, a longer-running favorite on Jackson Street, still runs its weekend brunch from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and its midweek specials, including Wednesday filet and Thursday and Friday prime rib.
Four kitchens on one short downtown strip, two of them new within the past sixteen months, is not something Cicero could say two summers ago.
What A Weekend Actually Looks Like Now
Put the park and the restaurant row together and a Saturday in Cicero looks different than it did even last year. Launch a kayak from the accessible ramp at Charlie's Landing in the morning, before the wind picks up on the open water. Walk five minutes into downtown for lunch at Ten West or Boathouse Kitchen and Swan Dive. Spend the afternoon at whichever park event is running, the Summer Festival on August 22 or the car show and craft fair on September 7. Finish with dinner at Red Bridge Bistro or DeLullo's, both still new enough that most of Hamilton County hasn't tried them yet.
None of that required a dock, a boat trailer, or a standing invitation from a lakefront neighbor. A year ago, most of it did.
Why This Matters Beyond One Summer
Reservoirs like Morse were built for water supply and flood control, not recreation, and the shoreline ownership pattern that followed made public access an afterthought for decades. What Cicero did this year with a pier, two launches and a name that credits the person who pushed for them is a small, specific correction to that pattern. It doesn't change who owns the shoreline. It changes who gets to use the water anyway.
For a town of a little over five thousand people, that's a meaningful shift in what an ordinary weekend can include, whether you've lived on Jackson Street for twenty years or just moved into one of the newer developments on Cicero's west side.
If you're weighing what life actually looks like in Cicero, from a Saturday morning launch at Charlie's Landing to a Tuesday night pizza at Ten West, MakeIndyHome can walk you through the neighborhoods, the water access and the parts of town that don't show up in a listing photo. Reach out for a conversation about what a home near Morse Reservoir would actually mean for how you spend your weekends, and get your free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk numbers.
