Jim Seida / msnbc.com

 
Women eat ice cream as they make their way through the Shipshewana Flea Market on Tuesday.
 

It’s barely 8:30 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday morning and already traffic in the tiny town of Shipshewana, Ind., is starting to slow as a line of cars, RVs, tourist buses and horse-drawn buggies begins to snake down the town’s main thoroughfare.

Within a few hours, the normally sleepy town with a population of around 500, will see its ranks swell to as many as 20,000 people, many of whom have come for one thing: the sprawling Shipshewana Auction & Flea Market.

The flea market, held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the summer months in this town about 25 miles east of Elkhart, is one of the main tourist attractions in northern Indiana’s Amish country.

But the market is by no means a purely Amish affair. Its mix of Amish and non-Amish retailers offer a mishmash of unexpected goods. Walk down one aisle and you may find a display of air guns across from a tent full of brightly tie-dyed clothing; elsewhere, shoppers can peruse pet strollers, wigs, bargain sunglasses, cleaning supplies and handmade toys created by local Amish woodworkers.

Along the edge of the market, a swath of mostly Amish retailers, many with children in tow, sells baked goods, home-grown produce, plants and treats such as handmade ice cream and jams.

Elsewhere on the grounds, fast-talking auctioneers sell antiques as well as livestock and horses.

Over the course of the year, the market  will attract between 1 million and 1.5 million visitors, said co-owner Kevin Lambright, though those numbers reflect some people coming back time and again.

Traffic is up by between 12 percent and 17 percent over the previous year, perhaps in part because more local residents are seeking out bargains during the recession, he said. But with people watching their budgets, the increased traffic isn’t necessarily translating into higher profits for vendors.

The market also is fielding more requests from area residents who have started their own businesses to cope with recession-related job losses, or who want to sell their own antiques to raise extra cash, he said.

But Mike Puro, Shipshewana’s town manager, said the fact that tourists are showing up at all has been a relief, and has offered some reprieve for area restaurants.

“What we are hearing is that even people that aren’t buying things, they do eat,” Puro said.

The flea market has been around since 1922, although it’s expanded significantly in recent decades, from about 280 stalls to nearly 1,000.

The market’s co-owners, brothers Kevin and Keith Lambright, also have expanded a restaurant and added a hotel and conference center as the area’s tourist traffic has built up. Meanwhile, other hotels and an indoor water park have sprung up in town.

Despite the sometimes overwhelming feel of the market -- with its vast parking lot, large RV park and long lines of stalls – Kevin Lambright said it remains a destination for residents from the local, mostly rural surroundings, drawing most of its business from a 150-mile radius.

“There’s a lot of social activity that takes place here,” he said.