Author Kyle Crichton wrote in 1960 about a circa 1937 reunion where the former residents of Peale returned to the abandoned town site for a reunion. "... an old resident of Peale organized a reunion. The town had been dead for years, but the response to the reunion call was astonishing. People came from all over the country. They brought their children and grandchildren, eager to show them the place where they had lived so happily. The streets of the old town had been laid out again, with signs bearing the names. When people decided to eat their lunch on the site where their house had once stood, others would cry:
'No, no; you've forgotten. It was over there, on the other side.'
They would find the right place, and point proudly to the trees they had once planted on their front lawn. They were now grown to mammoth size. It was hard to believe that human foot had ever trod this virgin land. Some of us climbed the hill to the old station, long since disappeared. It was a wonderful scene, a wonderful occasion. I was there as what they laughingly called the 'last white child born in Peale.' It was probably not accurate, but it was close.
We drove out with my brother John and his wife Alice, and at one point near our destination we lost our way.
'Peale!' said an old man in astonishment, when we asked directions. 'There is no Peale . . . but it's right down the road there.'
That is the way it is with Peale: it may be gone, but it still exists."
