Indiana Transportation History
Dedicated to the sharing of transportation history in Indiana.
Today, I want to show off how the Indiana State Highway Commission, through the Indiana Official State Highway Map, showed Marion County, and the various roads connecting to the Hoosier Capital. You never really know how much the routes have changed until you see them side by side by side.
All of images are taken from my personal collection.
Interstate 465. The Indianapolis bypass road has been a vital part of the fabric of the transportation system in central Indiana. The construction of this interstate started on the west side of Marion County, where it connected to I-65. It then worked its way around Marion County along the south, then east, sides. Construction of the north side section was completed in 1968. But it really wasn’t that simple. Planning actually started in 1961 for that section. And the state had been given five choices for the routing.
It is important to point out why I-465 is located where it is. I have covered this several times, but a brief overview is important for the context of the five choices. I-465 was a replacement (and completion) of SR 100, the Indianapolis bypass highway. When SR 100 was put down in plans, the rough line of the road was to be Shadeland/Five Points Roads, 82nd and 86th Streets, High School Road, and Thompson Road. A quick glance at a map shows that I-465 doesn’t vary too far from this plan.
The north side section I-465 would be the part of the road that would stray furthest from the original SR 100. But this was only in the final construction. In the five alternatives, some would be closer to the old state road. The proposals mentioned below were published publicly in June 1961.
The first plan, alternate A, “begins at a point on Ditch Road and continues eastward, generally adjacent to, and south of route 100 and 86th Street to a point just west of Spring Mill Road; thence northeast to a location about 1500 feet north of 86th Street; thence east to Manderley Road where it turns southeast and assumes the original alignment of Route 100. It then travels easterly to a point just east of Allisonville Road; thence southeasterly to the proposed east leg of IR 465 just north of 71st Street. All of Alternate A lies in Marion County.”
Alternate B, which begins at a point on Ditch Road about 2000 feet north of Alternate A extends easterly along a half section line (today known as the line of 91st Street) to College Avenue; thence northeast for about one mile to proposed SR 431; thence it bears southeast to the proposed east leg of IR 465 just north of 71st Street. All of Alternate B lies in Marion County.
Alternate C, which begins at a point on Ditch Road at 96th Street and extends easterly, adjacent to 96th Street, to the Monon R.R. where it again assumes the alignment of Alternate B to the proposed east leg of IR 465 just north of 71st Street. All of Alternate C lies in Hamilton and Marion Counties.
Alternate D, which begins at a point on Ditch Road about 200 feet north of 111th Street, thence easterly to the Monon R.R. The proposal then turns southeasterly to a point on proposed SR 431 approximately 1,600 feet north of 99th Street; thence it continues south by east over 96th Street to River Road where it turns almost due east to cross White River; thence southeast again to the proposed east leg of IR 465 just north of 71st Street. All of Alternate D lies in Hamilton and Marion Counties.
Alternate E, which begins at a point on Ditch Road about 800 south of 96th Street, and turns northeastward about 200 feet east of there to a point approximately 1,200 feet north of 96th; thence easterly to College Avenue where it assumes a southeasterly course crossing 96th Street about 400 feet east of the Monon R.R. and continues southeasterly to a proposed interchange with proposed SR 431 near 92nd Street. The alignment continues southeasterly crossing White River to a proposed interchange with SR 37A (Allisonville Road) about 1,700 feet north of the Junction of SR 37A and SR 100; then southeasterly to a proposed interchange with SR 37 and continues southeasterly to the proposed east leg of IR 465 just north of 71st Street. All of Alternate E lies in Hamilton and Marion Counties.
It should be noted that newspapers of the time covered the fact that, while the Highway Commission was planning I-465, or Alternate SR 100 as it was also known, plans were in the works to expand SR 100, at least on the north side. Also, a group called A Better County, Inc., was also pushing for I-465 to be even FURTHER out…as in north of Carmel. The proposals mentioned above were seen by that groups as representing “a deterent to the natural development of greater Indianapolis northward, and to the natural development of the town of Carmel southward.” It should be noted that while the words are quoted verbatim, the print was actually in all caps. Oh, yes. This half page ad by A Better County, Inc., had a LOT of caps in it.
I find it hard to say, given fifty years of its existence, that I-465 has hindered ANY development in the area. Also, the alternate that was chosen, closely resembling Alternate E, while not the greatest today, was at the time a good compromise. Alternate A would have, if I read it correctly, removed what is now known as the David Wolf Bridge across White River on 82nd/86th Street. Alternate D would have pushed the road 1.5 miles into Hamilton County. And none of these plans include anything about completing I-465, which at the time would be what is now I-865. (The section between I-865 and I-65, through what is now Park 100, came later. As a matter of fact, when it was proposed, that would have been SR 100, with I-465 still running from south of Whitestown [now 865] east, then south, then west, then north to what is now the ramp from I-465 to I-65 near Eagle Creek Park.)
I have covered many times about what state roads in Indiana were in the 1820’s through the 1840’s. At that time, a law was passed to make the state road, the road was built, and then it was turned over to the counties for maintenance. While these roads were built to connect towns, occasionally they were built to the property of specific individuals. Even then, the state didn’t seem to have the power to take personal property to create these roads, leading them to twist and turn their way across the state based on property lines and roads that were already in place to connect them. State roads were established TO destinations, not with specific instructions.
The purpose of this post is to show the creation of state roads, specifically from the acts of the Indiana Legislature of 1832-33. It will be more of a list post than anything, but it will give you an idea of what the legislature was thinking when it created those early state roads.
The following was taken from the Richmond Weekly Palladium of 16 February 1833. All spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar is as it appears in that newspaper.
To establish a state road from Fairfield in Franklin county to West Union in Fayette county. (Fairfield is seven miles north of Brookville. West Union is a village seven miles south-east from Connersville.)
To alter a part of the Mooresville and Crawfordsville state road, lying between Mooresville and Danville.
To relocate a part of the Terre-Haute state road.
Supplemental to an act entitled “an act to amend the act entitled an act to establish a state road from William Connelly’s in Lawrence county, to Greencastle in Putnam county, approved February 3, 1832.
Locating a state road from Delphi in Carroll county, to Crawfordsville in Montgomery county.
Authorizing a change in a part of the Munceytown (Muncie) and Logansport state road.
To establish a state road from Mount Pleasant in Martin county, to Springville in Lawrence county. (As listed in the 1833 Indiana Gazetteer, Mount Pleasant is a post town and county seat of Martin County, located on the west bank of the east fork of the White River, on the New Albany-Vincennes State Road. It was only the county seat from 1828 to 1844.)
To establish a state road from Fairplay in Green county, to intersect the Vincennes state road, at or near Benjamin Stafford’s in said county. (The village of Fairplay was three miles north of Bloomfield along the White River.)
To locate the Alquina state road.
To locate a state road from James Marr’s in Barthlolomew county, to Jacob Woodruff’s in Johnson county.
To locate a state road from Delphi to Munceytown.
To locate part of the Martinsville, Danville and Franklin State road and for other purposes.
To locate and establish a state road from the Fort Wayne road, near Stephen Stutsman’s, by way of the mouth of the Elkhart river, to the State line, in the direction of Edwardsburgh in Michigan territory.
To locate and establish a State road from Orleans, in Orange county, via Lavonia in Washington county, to intersect the State road leading from New Albany to Vincennes in the direction of Greenville, in Floyd county.
To locate a State road from New Castle in Henry county, to Munceytown, in Delaware county.
To locate so much of the Knightstown State road as lies between Pendleton, in Madison county, and strawtown in Hamilton county.
To relocate part of the Mauk’s ferry State road.
To establish a State road from Salisbury, in Harrison county, to Providence, in Clark county, by the way of Greenville in Floyd county. (The mentioned Providence was on the Muddy Fork of Silver Creek about 16 miles west north-west of Charlestown.)
To locate a State road from Lagrange in Tippecanoe county, to the State road leading from Williamsport, in Warren county, to Chicago in the State of Illinois.
To locate a State road from Centreville in Wayne county to a certain point in Henry county.
To establish a State road from Frankfort to a point on the Michigan road, and other purposes.
To establish a State road from Bloomington in Monroe county, by way of Bale’s ferry to Leesville, in Lawrence county. For the relief of Thomas Pogue and others.
Supplemental to an act authorizing the location of a State road from Lafayette, to Lake Michigan.
To vacate a certain State road therein named.
To locate a State road from Frenchtown in Warren county to Rusks’ Mill, in Parke county.
To locate a state road therein named.
To establish a state road from Shelbyville, in Shelby county, by the way of Goshen and Newbern, in Barthlomew county, to intersect the Indianapolis and Madison state road, near Klapp’s mills, in Jennings county. (The mentioned Goshen mentioned in this reference was the original name for the town of Hope. Newbern has been mentioned in several posts as having been on the state road from Shelbyville to Madison. One would assume that this is the act creating that road.)
To establish a state road from Lexington in Scott county, to Charlestown in Clark county, and for other purposes.
Looking at some of the locations on this list, it isn’t hard to tell that some of these roads still exist. Many are in the hands of the local counties. Some have been bypassed in places, cut off in others. Some of the places listed no longer exist. Others are just vague, with no locations of destinations mentioned.
As an aside, also passed by the legislature in that session was a joint resolution “on the subject of a railroad from the Mississippi river to the city of Washington.” That could be almost any number of routes across the state. I won’t even begin to venture a guess as to which it could have been.
Indiana has had two very short lived US routes that traversed the state. One, which I will cover later as part of the Road Trip 1926 series, US 112, and another that existed from 1934 to 1938. That second road was known as US 152.
US 152 started, at the south end, in Indianapolis. The road was multiplexed with its “mother” route, US 52, northwest out of Indianapolis via old Lafayette State Road. This multiplex carried both roads through Lebanon to Lafayette. When the US 52 bypass was built around Lafayette, it also included US 152.
The multiplex of US 52/152 ended at Montmorenci. While US 52 continued to the northwest, US 152 turned due north. It would stay going this direction, with a short correction, until it met US 24 near and through Walcott. US 24 and 152 were multiplexed to Remington, where US 152 turned north again.
US 152 continued its northward journey through Rensselaer to where the road met SR 10 near Kersey. The road then multiplexed with SR 10 until they turned separate ways (SR 10 west south, US 152 north) near Demotte. US 152 again continues north until it reached Hebron. At Hebron, it turned northwest, connecting to Crown Point. There, it turned due west, ending at US 41. In the early days of its existence, US 52 also ended at US 41 near Fowler. So both roads, when created, ended at this major US route in western Indiana.
As I mentioned before, US 152 had a very short life. By 1939, all references to US 152 disappeared from the state. The section that was US 152 from Montmorenci to Crown Point became SR 53 in 1939. From Crown Point to US 41, it was recommissioned SR 8. By 1942, SR 53 was moved to the east of Crown Point, and the section between Hebron and the new SR 53 became a multiplex of SR 8 and SR 53, with the continuation into Crown Point being just SR 8.
According to the Indiana Official State Highway maps of 1953, the US route designation would be returned to the old US 152 routing from Lafayette to US 41 west of Crown Point. This time, however, it would become known, as it still is today, as US 231. It would also retain it state road designations until 1971. This would leave US 231 a solo road from the time it left its multiplex with US 52 from Lafayette to Montmorenci. Below Lafayette, US 231 stayed multiplexed with state roads through the rest of Indiana…mostly SR 43. But that is a subject for another post.
Published on 6 December 1969, Bill Roberts wrote, for the Indianapolis News, an article that had the same title as this post: “Indiana – A Rail Center.” That article was one of the most complete, while being journalistically efficient (students of journalism will understand that), histories of the railroad system in Indiana I have ever read. It started with the beginning of construction on the Madison & Indianapolis in 1836 to what had survived to date in 1969. It basically included everything that involved using rails…including the interurbans.
The speed with which Indiana acquired its relatively large railroad network was rather remarkable. Railroads weren’t truly a tested technology when construction began in 1836 on the Madison & Indianapolis. While it wasn’t the only railroad included in the Mammoth Improvement Bill of 1836, it was the only one built. It took 11 years to reach Indianapolis…a distance from Madison of less than 100 miles. Less than three years later, in 1850, the total railroad mileage in the state was little more than 200. By 1880, that had ballooned to 4,373. There were 46 railroads, all independent, operating in Indiana that year. The article goes on to list them all, which I will not do here. Some of those companies in 1880 were grandiosely titled routes that had barely 20 miles of track. For instance, the Anderson, Lebanon & St. Louis (AL&StL). That railroad, at the time, only ran from Anderson to Noblesville, a total of 19 miles.
By 1920, when railroad mileage in Indiana was reaching its peak, there were only 28 railroad companies operating 7,426 miles of track in the state. Most railroads in the state were consolidated, company wise, through (what seemed to be far too) usually bankruptcy purchases. By the time of the publishing of the article in 1969, the following railroad companies still existed in Indiana: Penn Central (by far the largest); Chesapeake & Ohio; Baltimore & Ohio; Norfolk & Western; Illinois Central; Monon; Chicago & Eastern Illinois (these last two would become Louisville & Nashville in less than two years); Southern; Erie Lackawana; Milwaukee; Grand Trunk Western; and Chicago, South Shore & South Bend. There actually was one more – a seven mile line between Ferdinand and Huntingburg called the Ferdinand Railroad. After being created in 1905, and reorganization in 1911, it still chugged on in 1969. It was finally abandoned and dismantled in 1991.
By 1990, this number would be a lot smaller. 1976 saw the Penn Central and Erie Lackawana becoming Conrail. Norfolk & Western and Southern would join to become Norfolk Southern. The consolidation of the Monon and the Chicago & Eastern Illinois into the Louisville & Nashville, and the consolidation of the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Baltimore & Ohio into the Chessie System, would eventually lead to what is now CSX, or Chessie Seaboard Transportation. (The L&N would become part of the Seaboard Coast Lines, the ‘S’ in CSX.)
The article mentions, not incorrectly, that the interurban system came directly from the creation of the electric street railways between 1882 and 1895 in cities across Indiana, including Anderson, Columbus, Elwood, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Lafayette, Logansport, Richmond, South Bend and Terre Haute. The street railway system of Terre Haute would actually own most of the interurbans in the central part of the state and the street railways of Indianapolis. The street railways connecting to other towns was a logical extension of what was already in place. And Indiana’s interurban mileage was only second to Ohio.
The companies creating the Penn Central at the time of this article, the old Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, were the biggest two railroad companies in Indiana. The Pennsylvania was the first to truly consolidate their lines of the Southwestern System into one unit, known as the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis…or Panhandle. Another series of consolidations west of Indianapolis created the Vandalia in 1904. 1916 saw both the Vandalia and Panhandle become one.
The New York Central brought quite a bit of infrastructure to Indiana in their wake. First, by 1911, were the Beech Grove shops of the Big Four. At the time, the Big Four was a subsidiary of the New York Central…a leased operation. It wouldn’t be until 1930 that the Big Four would finally be absorbed by the New York Central completely. The Beech Grove Yards were used by the NYC for system wide repairs. The other legacy that was dragged into Penn Central by the New York Central was the Avon Yards. These railroad yards were, when built, state of the art.
Another example of the railroad center that is Indiana is Indianapolis Union Station. When built, Indianapolis Union Depot was the first of its kind. The five railroads that converged on the Hoosier capital made arrangements to work together to create a central location for passengers. Prior to that, stations were all over the downtown area for each of the railroads. The Union Depot became Union Station in the late 1880’s, with the building of a replacement for the old Depot. The late 1910’s to early 1920’s saw the capacity increased with the elevation of the tracks at Union Station. Along with the Union Depot/Union Station, the same owners built a Belt Railroad around the city of Indianapolis. The article mentions that the current owner of the Union Station, Penn Central, would love to get rid of the deteriorating albatross. The Penn Central became the owners of the Indianapolis Union Railway (the Belt and the station trackage) because the Pennsylvania owned 60% of the company, and the New York Central owned the other almost half. With their merger in 1968, the became sole owners of the place.
Much of the railroad history in Indiana is long gone. Indianapolis, which would see in upwards of 200 passenger trains a day, is now down to one. And that is not even daily. Freight trains still cross the Indiana landscape, but not to the extent they once did. Due to abandonments and consolidations, many railroad track right of ways have been removed. A lot of the old Pennsylvania Railroad fell into this category, with the delayed maintenance taking its toll on the road before it became merged with the New York Central. By the time Conrail was created, most of the PRR tracks were too far gone to save. Getting to, say, New York from Indianapolis by train would require going to Chicago now…unless you are talking freight, then it requires a trip through Muncie because the direct line to Columbus, Ohio, has been gone since the early 1980’s.
Indiana’s railroad history is, while not completely gone, stumbling along as best it can given what is left.
Today’s Road Trip concerns the subject of the very first Road Trip 1926 I posted in the Indiana Transportation History group over on Facebook. It happens to be one of the most moved roads in the state.
The official description, as posted in newspapers across Indiana in September, 1926, is as follows: “U. S. Route 50 – Across Indiana from Vincennes to the Ohio line wast of Lawrenceburg through Washington, Loogootee, Shoals, Mitchel, Beford, Brownstown, Seymour, North Vernon, Versailles, Aurora and Lawrenceburg. From Vincennes to Loogootee this is now known as State Road 5, from that point to Mitchell as State Road 41, from Mitchell to Bedford as State Road 22 and from Bedford to the Ohio line as State Road 4.”
Indiana. The Crossroads of America. When the Auto Trails came to the state, there were quite a number of them. In 1922, there were 34 to be exact. While the State Highway Commission was busy putting state road numbers everywhere, people at the time still followed the colorful markers that appeared on utility poles throughout the state. In November 1922, an article was published in several newspapers across Indiana describing those Auto Trails. Those articles showed the signs that were posted along the way, and a brief description of the route. Anyone that has seen these lists in person know that the order of the highways is a bit weird. Yellowstone Trail is always listed first. Why? Because Rand McNally, when publishing the “official” Auto Trails maps in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s listed it first. It wasn’t the first such road…but Rand decided it would be.
When Carl Fisher started work on the first transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway, the only that that was decided was that it would connect the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. Some Indiana cities, especially Indianapolis, realized very early on that the “straightest and shortest course” of the highway would come nowhere them. Others, like Fort Wayne, held out hope that the road would connect them to the rest of the country. And it would.
The route was being laid out in 1913. When the decisions were made, the entire route would be 2,945 miles in length. This made the Lincoln Highway just 200 miles shorter than the most direct railroad route across the country. Mr. Fisher would appear in Fort Wayne on 10 October 1913 to let people of the area know that the highway would, in fact, traverse through the town. While making this announcement, Fisher also added that the 15 foot wide, nine inch deep, road would cost, on average $12, 000 a mile. In Indiana, due to cost of materials, the cost would be less. (Source: Fort Wayne Daily News, 11 October 1913)
Plans had already been put in place when it came to marking the “new” road. It is important to keep in mind that very little of the route was “new road.” And in Indiana, none of it was. It had been arranged that Indiana Paint & Varnish Company start marking the highway with “a bar of red three inches wide, a bar of white fifteen inches in width, and a bar of blue three inches in width. On the bar of white will be painted a large black ‘L’.” The local crews, from Fort Wayne, would cover the area from the Indiana-Ohio State Line to a point two miles north of Fort Wayne. There the “Churubusco delegation” would continue along the Goshen Road to Ligonier.
The routing of the Lincoln Highway east from South Bend was brought into question in January 1914. (Source: South Bend Tribune, 20 January 1914) Officials were thinking about moving the Lincoln Highway from Vistula Avenue through Mishawaka and Osceola to Jefferson Boulevard to the Elkhart County Line. This would have the result of removing the highway from Osceola. Reasoning for this was the dangerous railroad crossings that will be described in next. It should be noted here that the officials at Osceola were not having any of this talk, and refused to help in financing, in any way, the removal of the Lincoln Highway from their town.
Shortly after the highway was completed, Elkhart County officials had already decided on a plan to move the already marked highway. It was reported in the South Bend Tribune of 20 May 1916 that a new highway would be constructed eliminating all at grade railroad crossings between Elkhart and Osceola. The New York Central Railroad was donating land for the move, and the Northern Indiana Railway was moving its tracks to the south of the then current road at Osceola. This moving of the road would benefit travelers between South Bend and Elkhart, as the traffic on the NYC lines through the area had increased quite a bit.
In August 1915, there was talk about abandoning a section of the Lincoln Highway. The Indiana Public Service Commission was considering abandoning 800 feet of the original route one mile east of New Carlisle. (Source: South Bend Tribune, 19 August 1915) “Possibility of a change in the road to avoid considerable expense in the construction of a subway to the three railroads crossing the highway at this point, seems more likely.” The New York Central was pushing for a less costly crossing of the tracks. “The right to change the route of the Lincoln highway, alter the contract for the work now being done, the question of drainage in the subways, and the expense involved, are being considered by the service commission.”
When the Indiana State Highway Commission was originally created in 1917, the Lincoln Highway’s route across the state became known as “Mark Market Highway #2.” But there was work afoot, again from Commissioners of Elkhart County, to move parts of MMH 2 in Benton Township from east to west along the Lincoln Highway to a more southern route. The plan was to leave the highway at Corns Corners, run 2.5 miles south, then turn due east toward Ligonier, meeting the Lincoln again at Hire’s Corners. Since Federal and State money would be (not for two years) available to pave MMH 2, having the road to Goshen being within three miles of Lake Wawasee was seen as something to petition a change in the road for.
The oldest Federal Road in the United States, one that was known as the National Road, cuts its way across Indiana in a fairly straight path. The idea was, when the roads goals were expanded from the original idea of connecting Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River at Wheeling, (West) Virginia, to connect the capitol cities of the new states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In Indiana, that meant connecting through the middle of the state from Columbus, Ohio, in the east, then turning west-southwest to end up in Vandalia, Illinois, in the west. This road would prove to be very important to the settlement through the areas where it was built. But in Indiana, it would bypass some of what was, at the time, important towns along the way…the county seats.
Counties through which the National Road would be built had already been put in place between mostly 1820 and 1822. The amendment routing the road through the capitols of the new states was approved in 1825. Prior to this, the National Road would have been between 10 and 15 miles south of Indianapolis as originally planned. The road would be built through eight counties in Indiana. Along the way, it connected five county seats: Terre Haute, Richmond, Indianapolis (the state capital), Greenfield (created after the survey was done for the National Road) and Brazil (the county seat was moved there in 1877).
It should be noted here that while there were two counties called Wabash and Delaware at that time, they were unorganized territory given the names of counties until it could be organized into other counties. As a matter of fact, both of the future counties of those names actually were created from the unorganized Delaware County.
Vigo County: This county was created by law on 21 January 1818, to be effective 15 February 1818. It was taken from part of Sullivan County. The county seat was located on 21 March 1818 at Terre Haute. Terre Haute happened to be on a direct line from Indianapolis to Vandalia. Although the county changed its borders five times over the years (January 1819, January 1821, December 1821, December 1822, and April 1825) after creation, the county seat stayed in Terre Haute.
Clay County: Creation of this county was effective 1 April 1825, by statute of 12 February 1825, and was taken from Owen, Putnam, Vigo, and Sullivan Counties. In May 1825, the county seat was chosen to be the town of Bowling Green. Petitions to move the seat were advanced in 1843 and 1853, both failing. Another petition, in 1871, succeeded in moving the county seat to Brazil. The move wasn’t official until all the records were, after the completion of a new courthouse building, moved to Brazil in 1877. The location of Brazil had been on the National Road since it was built in the 1830’s.
Putnam County: Created from Owen, Vigo and Wabash Counties effective 1 April 1822, from a law passed 31 December 1821. Commissioners had failed to act the first time when it came to the county seat. A second set of commissioners, in April 1823, located the county seat at a survey location, not a town. Greencastle was platted at that location. It has been the county seat since. The National Road passed south of this location.
Hendricks County: Created by statute of 20 December 1823, effective 1 April 1824, Hendricks County was taken from both the unorganized Wabash and Delaware Counties. On 12 July of the same year, Danville was chosen as the county seat. The National Road passes south of this town. However, it should be noted that might not have been the case…had things in Illinois came together a few years earlier. Rumblings in Illinois, helped along by a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, moved the capital of that state to Springfield, from Vandalia, in 1839. It could have been possible that the National Road could have run due west from Indianapolis to Springfield along the Rockville Road.
Marion County: Created from Delaware County effective 1 April 1822, on a law passed on 21 December 1821. This was to be the county that contained the new Indiana capital city platted by Alexander Ralston earlier in 1821. Due to its status as Indiana’s capital, the 1825 extension would connect to this county seat no matter what. It was routed through the new city along its main street (see Indianapolis Washington Street), which is why Washington Street, through downtown, actaully is angled just south of due east, then turns to north of due east. It should be noted that Indianapolis is technically not the county seat of Marion County. By law, Marion County’s seat of government is “square 58 in the town of Indianapolis.” That would put it on the National Road, as that is where the City-County Building now stands…and the county courthouse before that.
Hancock County: This county was created by statute on Christmas Eve, 1827, effective 1 March 1828. 41 days later, commissioners chose a spot along the new National Road survey to be the county seat. That town would become Greenfield. It would never lose its place as county seat.
Henry County: Passed on 31 December 1821, effective 1 Jun 1822, the law creating Henry County would take area from Delaware County. The town of New Castle was chose immediately as the county seat, a spot it has never relinquished. The future National Road would run south of New Castle.
Wayne County: This was actually the second such named county in the region of Indiana. The first was Wayne County of the Northwest Territories. While it encompassed a lot of the Indiana territory, it ended up in Michigan Territory when it was created. (With its seat of justice being Detroit.) The current Wayne County got its start when, effective 1 January 1811, parts of Clark and Dearborn Counties were taken away. The county seat was chosen on 5 December 1811 as Salisbury. When Wayne County’s borders were changed on 10 August 1818, the county seat was moved to Centerville. The National Road would connect to this town…and its successor, Richmond. That move happened on 15 August 1873.
I know this post is more history than transportation history. But I feel it is important to give some context behind the transportation at times.
When one looks at a map of the state of Indiana, one gets the impression that, with the exception of straightening roads here and there, the roads that are on the landscape have been there forever. When some of the names of these roads are taken into consideration (for example, in Marion County, where I am, we have Rockville Road, Lafayette Road, Zionsville Road, Westfield Boulevard, Allisonville Road, Pendleton Pike, Brookville Road, Shelbyville Road, Madison Avenue, etc.), it should be a dead giveaway where these roads go. For the most part, you would be accurate. However, doing some research into old state roads, especially from 1833, shines new light on what one would think about where these road go.
Let’s start with what is now SR 44. I covered it (outside of the Road Trip 1926 series) with the article “Fight for Adding SR 44 from Martinsville to Rushville.” What we now know as SR 44 from Franklin to Rushville wasn’t always as straight forward as it is today. The 1833 Indiana Gazetteer describes Shelby County as having “the advantage of several state roads.” This is true. The Michigan Road, which was also part of the Greensburgh (spelling at the time!) State Road and the Lawrenceburgh (again, spelling at the time) State Road, connected Indianapolis to not only Greensburg and Lawrenceburg, but to Madison, since that was where the Michigan Road started.
But several other roads were listed in the 1833 Gazetteer. And remember, I was discussing SR 44. “A road from Rushville to Edinburgh” passes through the central part of the county. The first part, from Rushville to Shelbyville, would become part of SR 44 almost a century later. But the second half of the road, from Shelbyville to Edinburgh, still roughly exists. The road in question doesn’t look like what is now Smithland Road. The Rushville State Road traveled through Shelbyville along what is now Washington Street, as did the original path of the Michigan Road. The Edinburgh side of the route would leave Shelbyville along Washington Street and follow Old Franklin Road/Old State Highway 44 to Marietta Road. Then along that route to Marietta. South of that town, at CR 700S, the road name changes to Edinburgh Road. While it doesn’t connect directly to Edinburgh…because old state roads rarely did connect directly to where they were going…you can still get there along that old road.
The other part of what would become SR 44 connected Franklin, in Johnson County, to Andersonville, on the Brookville State Road, in Franklin County. This old road would join the Rushville-Edinburgh road west of Shelbyville, enter that city on Washington Street, then leave following what is now Michigan Road to what is now SR 244.
Newbern, a town northeast of Columbus in Bartholomew County, had the honor of being along several old state roads. First, a road that connected Napoleon, on the Michigan and Lawrenceburg Roads, to Bloomington ran through the town. Another road connected Shelbyville to Madison more directly than did the Michigan Road. Also, a county road that connected Newbern to both Azalia and Greensburg ran through the town. The road to Greensburg would (probably) become part of SR 46 later in life.
Muncietown, now known as Muncie, also had the benefit of several state roads connecting it to the outside world. One road connected Indianapolis to the Ohio State Line through the town. It is a good guess that in the 20th century, this would become part of SR 67. Another state road route that would enter Muncie connected Richmond to Logansport. This would roughly be US 35 today…but was also known as SR 21 for a few short years between Richmond and Muncie. Also connecting to Muncie was a county road from New Castle to Fort Wayne. This would later become roughly SR 3.
For those of you that are really into the history of Indiana, be sure to check out Google Books for the Indiana Gazetteer of 1833 and Indiana Gazetteer of 1849. Both of those books make for some interesting reading. The both give a very good picture of Indiana at the time, with the names of locations throughout the state that may or may not be on maps today.
The Dixie Highway, described in the Indianapolis News of 18 September 1915, as “that born-in-Indianapolis enterprise,” spanned the eastern United States from both Chicago and northern Michigan to Miami, Florida. There were two routes of this cross-country highway. Both of them crossed Indiana. And both met in Indianapolis, home of Carl G. Fisher, creator of the Dixie Highway. But routing the highway got to be contentious. Towns across the state argued that the route should go through their area. Even Mr. Fisher got involved. Here are some of those stories.
BLOOMINGTON
First, we start with Bloomington. The Martinsville Reporter-Times, of 25 May 1915, reports that “Bloomington Will Celebrate. News of success in securing Dixie Highway brought joy to the people of University City.” The news reached Bloomington from Chattanooga, the home base of the Dixie Highway Association, via the local newspaper, the Bloomington Telephone. Bands played, flags flew and politicians made speeches celebrating the news. “The Chamber of Commerce is making plans to hold a big celebration in a few days over the result of the Dixie Highway contest. Thomas Taggart, who stood by Bloomington from the first to last, will be a special guest for the celebration and no doubt will be given a royal reception.”
FRANKLIN
This led to some hard feelings in other southern and central Indiana communities. First was Franklin. The town had the advantage of being on the state roads that connected Indianapolis to Madison, Jeffersonville, and Mauckport, as well as other destinations throughout the state. The Franklin Star, through the Reporter-Times article mentioned above, reported “the Dixie Highway will not be routed over the State road. Instead it will take the circuitous route leading from Louisville through Paoli, Bedford, Bloomington and Martinsville to Indianapolis.” The newspaper reports that the direct route “never had a chance, not even from the first.” This was due, according to sources, to the fact that the “direct route” didn’t have a member on the Commission deciding the route. Mr. Fisher himself lobbied for the route to go through Franklin, Columbus and Seymour as “it was the best and shortest.”
COLUMBUS
Columbus and its newspaper, the Republican, were more poetic in their disapproval of the choice. “The Dixie highway from Miami, Fla., to South Ben (sic), Ind., does not touch Columbus, side, edge or bottom. A gentleman by the name of Thomas Taggart, who was one of Indiana’s commissioners, seems to have had things his own way. As a result the route comes through Indiana from Louisville through Paoli (which is only a short distance from Taggart’s tavern at French Lick, and then includes Salem, Bedford, Bloomington and Martinsville as it winds its weary way over the hills and gullies to Indianapolis.” It also went on to say that “on the heels of the announcement that Franklin, Columbus, Seymour and Salem ‘also ran,’ comes a dispatch from Salem stating that articles of incorporation were to be filed with the Secretary of State today for a new association which would build a direct route through Indiana, connecting the local cities and making a highway that tourists would rather use than the official route through Bedford and Bloomington.” Carl Fisher was reported to have been a backer of the local association.
SEYMOUR
The Seymour Republican’s editorial board added this response: “Because of the winding, hilly, circuitous course selected in Indiana for the Dixie Highway it has been characterized as the ‘Nixie Highway’ and ‘pretzel road.'” The paper noted that it was almost a foregone conclusion that Seymour would be left off the Dixie Highway when it was decided that there would be two routes, one through Cincinnati and one through Louisville. “It was conceded then that politics had overshadowed the great purpose of the Dixie Highway movement and that the powers ‘that be’ would route the Indiana highway by way of French Lick.” The paper had less than pleasant things to say about Thomas Taggart, whom is described as the “king of Plutoville.” Mr. Taggart was busy from beginning to end of the talks. “Carl Fisher’s direct route plan was completely smothered under by the political machinations that were hatched up at the conference.” Although Fisher created the route, and the Lincoln Highway as well, he was all but ignored, and the decision “was left to the men having the most influential political pull and Thomas Taggart was ‘there with the goods.'” It is noted that the actions of the commission creating the route was in direct contravention with all the ideas of the “national good roads movement which has been to select the most direct route considering the number of people that will be benefited.”
The Seymour Republican went on to add something that would become prophetic: “the route through Bloomington and Bedford is so winding and hilly that it is doubtful if it will ever become a national highway. The government, it is conceded, will be slow to recognize it as a main highway and it is very doubtful if federal aid will ever be given for its improvement.” When the Indiana State Highway Commission was created in 1917, the “direct route” would be chosen as one of the first five “Main Market” roads, given the number 1. The Dixie Highway, from Martinsville to Paoli, would be added to the state road system two years later as SR 22. From Paoli to New Albany, it would be given the designation SR 42. SR 1 would become US 31 in 1926.
CRAWFORDSVILLE
The city of Crawfordsville was very happy with the decisions of the Dixie Highway routing commission. “The choosing of the route through Crawfordsville means more to the city and county than many realize.” Much is touted about the pending coming of “thousands of tourists,” feeding money into the community via the “merchants, hotel men, garage proprietors and others.”
GREENCASTLE
The Greencastle Banner reported that “Greencastle will not be on either of the Dixie highways.” “The routes go most any way and the finsh (sic) was not satisfactory and the finding may be changed later to one route. Greencastle is no nearer the route than Martinsville or Indianapolis as at present arranged.”
When the new SR 46 was created on 1 October 1926, it was described as follows: “State Road 46 – Spencer to Lawrenceburg by way of Bloomington, Nashville, Columbus, Greensburg, Batesville, Penntown and Greendale. (The Spencer-Columbus section is now a part of State Road 26. The Columbus-Greensburg section is new road. The Greesnburg to Lawrenceburg part is now State Road 53.)
The section listed as “new road” were listed on the Indiana Official State Highway Map for the Great Renumbering as an authorized addition…so it would not be part of the SR 46 route until after the Great Renumbering.
Greene County, 1989. A ferry across the White River, owned by Greene County, is sold to private interests. The ferry had been in roughly the same location for over 120 years. The Greene County Commissioners decided that the cost of maintenance and insurance was getting too much to keep giving the free service to the public. Slowing use didn’t help much. With no income, and an outlay of between $10,000 and $15,000 annually, the county sold the ferry, ending a service that had seen its fair share of tourists and mishaps over its history.
Farmers Ferry began life crossing the White River at the unincorporated town of Farmers, an Owen County community 12 miles south of Spencer on both the Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad and the Indianapolis-Vincennes state road (which would, eventually, become SR 67). The town was named after a merchant in the area. The railroad, which had commenced construction in 1867, built a station at the town called Farmers Station. A post office there opened in 1869. That post office was changed from Farmers Station to Farmers in 1882, and closed in 1931.
The ferry was used, once the railroad was in operation, to move cattle and hogs across the White River to be loaded onto trains to be sold in Indianapolis. The Indianapolis Stock Yards were located close to the Indianapolis end of the I&V, making this railroad convenient for farmers in the area. The ferry service chugged along its merry way until 1918, when a change of course of the White River caused the service to migrate downstream by about one half mile into Greene County. The wooden ferry boat was replaced with a steel one in 1930. The moving of the river caused the town of Farmers, which at the turn of the 20th Century, had “three doctors, two drugstores, three groceries, and ice plant and a feed mill,” (Source: Indianapolis News, 3 August 1977) to become, by 1977, a place described as “although you can find Farmers on the official Indiana highway map, there is nothing here but a pump with no handle.”
Local residents were working on replacing the ferry as early as 1940. According to the Linton Daily Citizen of 28 February 1940, petitions had been filed with the Greene County Board of Commissioners asking for the old SR 54 bridge across the White River at Elliston be moved to replace the ferry near Farmers. Dirt approaches had been built, but the cost of moving and maintaining the bridge were too much for the county to bear. At the time, the ferry cost around $6,000 yearly.
One of the best descriptions of the Farmers Ferry was published in the Indianapolis Star of 1 February 1948. “Just south of the Owen-Greene County line a winding country road branched off Indiana Highway 67, meanders through cornfields and woodland and after a mile or so comes to an abrupt end in front of a cottage-like dwelling on the west bank of White River. Tied up at a rude landing below the little house is the Green (sic) County Navy – an unimpressive two-craft fleet but, nonetheless, the only county-owned navy in all Indiana.” The ferry operator at the time was George Baker, referred to, jokingly, as “Admiral Baker.” At the time of this article, “the officials of Greene County presently are engaged in modernizing their fleet. They have on order, with delivery promised soon, a new flagship – an all-metal 10 feet longer than the present ferry.” “I ought to get a new uniform to go with the new boat,” Baker says.
Over its history, the ferry had seen its share of mishaps. In 1957 or 1958, due to poor loading of the ferry, two loads of cattle were dumped into the river. Clyde W. Thompson, local resident, stated recalled the story that happened to his father. The cattle swam back to the bank and climbed out of the river “after their dip.” (Source: Indianapolis Star, 2 July 1989). “One ferryman had the distinction of sinking the same truck – his own – twice: once when it slipped off the ferry, and again when it rolled into the water from the bank.” A truckload of lime slipped from the ferry on 17 April 1956. (Source: Linton Daily Citizen, 18 April 1956) The truck was declared a total loss, and the load of lime was swept away by the swift currents of the White River.
The South Bend Tribune of 1 November 1981 interviewed the ferry operator at the time, Bernard Calvert. With the $700 a month he was paid to run the ferry, he was helping support poor families in Malaysia and the Philippines. His personal history was covered in that story. I don’t plan on going into it here. Suffice it to say after losing almost everything, he decided that it wasn’t going to happen again.
By the time an article was published in the Princeton Daily Clarion on 14 May 1965, there were only two intrastate ferries left in Indiana. One was Farmers. The other was southwest of Bloomfield, which had began operation in 1957 to replace a 400-foot long covered bridge built in 1889. The bridge approaches were undermined by the 1957 spring floods, forcing the county to decide a ferry was cheaper than building a new bridge. This made Greene County unique in that it operated two toll-free ferries, as the Linton Daily Citizen of 20 June 1960 pointed out, “across a stream that’s considered ‘not navigable,’ White River.” The two ferry boats were referred to as the “Greene County Navy.”
The Farmers Ferry, by 1987, had dropped to an average usage of six people a day. The ferryman at that time, Jesse Burton, made roughly $7,000 a year to run the facility. Those people worked the fields in the area. They used the ferry to avoid the 26 mile journey to cross the river otherwise.
The Greene County Commissioners sold the ferry to Carter M. Fortune, who had just purchased a ranch along the river. The ranch, known by locals as the “Flying-T,” who sold to Fortune by the family of Clyde W. Thompson, mentioned above. Fortune’s goal was to keep the ferry active, but due to insurance concerns, only for private use. At that point, the Farmers Ferry had been listed in tourist brochures as the “last passenger ferry in Indiana.” With the closing of the Farmers Ferry, crossing the White River required travelers to either go south to Worthington, where SR 157 crosses the river, or to Freedom where the CR 590 bridge allows passage. These crossings are ten miles apart.
In the mid 1900’s, the New York Central chose a site where four townships (Center, Perry, Warren and Franklin) come together to create what would be the second largest industrial city then being built in the United States. The New York Central was building a very large shop facility in the name of their subsidiary, the Big Four. Over 100 years later, the shops are still working. Although the city of Beech Grove was built to be a railroad city, today it doesn’t depend on that industry to survive.
The central intersection of the new town would be along the township lines separating the four townships named above. First Avenue (now Emerson Avenue) is the dividing line east to west for these townships…Center to Warren, and Perry to Franklin. Albany Street (known as Troy Avenue throughout the rest of Marion County) forms the boundary between Center and Perry, and Warren and Franklin. The large shops themselves are actually in Warren and Franklin Townships.
The plan for the New York Central shop facilities were immense. 22 buildings were planned on the 600 acres purchased by the NYC. The total cost would be in the $3 to $5 million range. To the west of the new facility, the Beech Grove Improvement Company purchased 1,100 acres to create a town to support the new industry.
The official list of buildings planned, according to the Beech Grove Improvement Company, are listed in the following ad for the sale of lots.
When the plans were being laid for the future Beech Grove, Indianapolis was a major railroad hub. The Big Four, while named for bigger cities outside Indiana, basically had its center in Indianapolis. All of the railroads that were consolidated to create the Big Four did have Indianapolis in their name prior to the creation of the massive railroad company. They also owned 40% of the Indianapolis Belt Railway and Indianapolis Union Station. Being the central point of the company, it made sense to build large shops in the Indianapolis area.
The area had been a quiet farming community during the 19th Century known as Ingleston. The current name of the town, reportedly, came from a stand of old growth trees in the area. The first church in the area was built in 1837. The first school in 1868. The next station railroad east (southeast) of Ingleston was called Poplar Grove. Poplar Grove today is roughly the location of an Indianapolis Power & Light substation. The owner of a large cattle farm in the area, F. M. Churchman, convinced the railroad that traversed the area to build a shipping spur in the area. The station created took the name Beech Grove.
In 1906, the New York Central decided to create their facilities. It took four years to build the majority of the shops. At the time, they were advertised as the “greatest locomotive hospital in the world.” It would maintain this moniker until the coming of the diesel locomotives. Those engines were being serviced elsewhere. This led to a downturn in railroad employment in the town.
In 1975, the facility would be turned over to Amtrak, the United States’ passenger railroad. Some may question this decision, especially today, since Amtrak really hasn’t had a strong train presence in Indianapolis. But, due to its central location and proximity to Chicago, Beech Grove was seen as the perfect place for Amtrak’s major shops.
At the south end of what is now SR 135 is the town of Mauckport. This town was the terminus of one of the early (as in 1820’s-1830’s) state roads in Indiana, the Mauck’s Ferry (now Mauxferry) Road, connecting Indianapolis to the Ohio River west of Louisville. When the Indiana Toll Bridge Commission (ITBC) was created in 1940, as mentioned in the “Bridge at New Harmony” post of 10 January 2020, it was planned to build a bridge crossing the Ohio River at Mauckport.
The building of the Mauckport bridge was debated across the state. It was also caught in a Catch 22 situation from the very beginning. The ITBC would build the bridge, as long as the Indiana State Highway Commission (ISHC) improve SR 135 to Corydon. The ISHC didn’t see the need to improve the road there until the bridge was built.
The pending construction was already approved by government entities involved. Not only did this include the State of Indiana and Commonwealth of Kentucky, but also the United States Federal government in the form of the US Army Corps of Engineers, a requirement for all bridges across the Ohio. Construction was also encouraged by the United States Army.
Then, the pending location of the bridge was debated, as well. There was some question whether the structure should be built at Mauckport or at Evans Landing, just west of West Point, Kentucky. This question came up surrounding the US Army and its desire for a bridge over the Ohio River. The Army saw a bridge somewhere around here as a necessity for transportation between Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Benjamin Harrison. The Evans Landing location was researched as it was closer to Fort Knox than Mauckport is. The difference, in the eyes of locals, is the fact that Evans Landing was connected by county roads, while Mauckport already had SR 135.
Editors of newspapers got into the fray when it came to building a bridge on the Ohio River. One local paper even started their editorial as follows: “Metropolitan daily newspapers too often make use of their editorial columns to comment on matters about which they are either wholly uninformed or in which they are careless with the truth.” (Source: Jackson County Banner, 14 January 1942) The Banner editorial staff takes to task the their counterparts at the Indianapolis Star. The Star took the stance that “a bridge at this point has not been contemplated by any authorities, hence, the defense angle to the current agitation seems far-fetched.” Unfortunately for the Star editors, such a claim was not quite true.
As far as connecting the two forts, “It has long been recognized that the ‘bottleneck’ between Ft. Knox and Ft. Benjamin Harrison is a tortuous and narrow entrance to Louisville, through either bridge, and the vast difficulty of traversing her crowded streets and finally the exit through 18th street, the narrow, crooked and cobblestone paved ‘Dixie’ highway that leads to Ft. Knox.” An addition point made by the newspaper was that “the growing conviction that a new Army camp will be built in Bartholomew county, add to the importance of this bridge and Highway 135, which would serve this new camp, without further damming up traffic on the already congested Highway 31.” This made the bridge very important in the defense of the United States, or so it was argued.
Ironically, that Army post in Bartholomew County would cut a big section out of the original state road connecting Indianapolis and Mauckport.
And yet, the bridge wouldn’t be built at that time. In October 1948, the bridge, as well as bridges at Lawrenceburg, Cannellton, and Mount Vernon, were still being planned by the ITBC. But the Mauckport span was being mentioned in an article concerning the moving of the Lawrenceburg bridge from a paper project to surveyors being sent to look into the route for that bridge. (Source: Jasper Herald, 23 October 1948) It seems that such a view might have been a bit premature. The bridges over the Ohio River at Mauckport, Cannellton and Lawrenceburg were still being studied in 1959. The difference with the Lawrenceburg bridge would be that, according to the Columbia City Commercial-Mail of 23 July 1959, was to “be studied as to feasibility and benefits as a possible part of the interstate highway system by-passing Cincinnati.”
The Mauckport project came up again in 1960 when it was announced that the bridge would be financed through the use of tolls. This seems strange in the grand scheme of things, given that the bridge had been in planning stages since 1939 by the Indiana Toll Bridge Commission.
Groundbreaking for the new Mauckport span was set for 8 August 1964, 25 years after first mention of building the bridge. The contract for the construction had been let a week earlier, when R. E. Daily and Long Land and Equipment Company of Detroit was the low bidder. The ceremony was held at 10:30 that morning, with the governors of Indiana and Kentucky in attendance. 300 other distinguished guests were also invited. It should also be noted that the groundbreaking for the Cannellton bridge had already happened on 13 July 1964.
Dedication ceremonies for the “Matthew E. Welsh Memorial Bridge,” the official name of the Mauckport span, was held on 29 October 1966. The problem was that weather conditions, and shortage of supplies, had caused the delay of opening of the bridge to traffic. This would change on 19 November 1966. The bridges at Cannellton and Mauckport cost around $11.6 million, with $5.4 million coming from a bond issue, the rest being paid for by Indiana cigarette taxes.
By 1987, the bridge toll was 60 cents. This was expected to last another two to four years until the construction debt was paid off. 1989 saw the governors of Indiana and Kentucky meeting about assorted bridge projects over the Ohio, with the possibility of a maintenance agreement being made to remove the tolls from the Cannellton and Mauckport spans. The tolls on the Mauckport span would be removed on 24 August 1992.
In the 1910’s, organizations were being set up all over the country to support building a system of roads, called Auto Trails, to facilitate the moving of traffic across the state and across the nation. I have covered several of these of the past 11 months: Lincoln Highway, Hoosier Dixie, National Road, Michigan Road, Dandy Trail, Crawfordsville to Anderson, Hoosier Highway, Ben Hur Route, Jackson Highway, Tip Top Trail, Riley Highway, Illinois Corn Belt and the Midland Route. The purpose of these organizations was to create good, hard surface roads, allowing better, faster and safer transportation across the United States. Some organizations were successful. Others were not. And some of these were brought into the early Indiana State Road system.
Now, when I say brought into the system, it should be known that occasionally I will be talking about corridors…although many of the the roads were taken directly by the State Highway Commission.
The Yellowstone Trail: The Yellowstone Trail connected Plymouth, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington, and both to the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. From Valparaiso to Fort Wayne, the Yellowstone Trail became SR 44 originally. Later, in 1923, it would be changed to SR 2. That designation would be gone in 1926, when the corridor became that of US 30.
Dixie Bee Line: Designed as a more direct route to the south, as opposed to the older and more famous Dixie Highway, the Dixie Bee Highway separated from its namesake at Danville, Illinois. It entered Indiana northwest of Cuyuga, and went roughly due south through Terre Haute, Vincennes and Evansville. In 1920, the section from Cuyuga south became SR 10. It would later become SR 63 to Clinton, then US 41 to Evansville.
Range Line: This route became part of, arguably, the most important north-south route in Indiana. The Range Line Road, connecting Indianapolis to Peru via Kokomo, started life in Indianapolis as the Westfield Road. It got its Auto Trail name from the fact that it followed a survey line, called the Range Line, up to west of Peru, where it ended at the Wabash Way, mentioned later. It was so important that the route would be made a Main Market Road in 1917, given the number 1. It became SR 1 in 1919. It was changed to US 31 in 1926.
Lincoln Highway: The original version of this first transcontinental highway connected across Indiana via Valparaiso, LaPorte, South Bend, Elkhart, Goshen, Ligonier, and Fort Wayne. Again, due to its importance, it became one of the first five Main Market Roads in 1917, given the number 2. It then became SR 2. In 1923, the Fort Wayne to Elkhart became SR 46, Elkhart to South Bend became SR 25 to Rolling Prairie, and the rest of the original Lincoln Highway to Valparaiso became SR 42, while the future Lincoln Highway became SR 2 along the Yellowstone Route corridor. The two ends of the road in Indiana became US 30, while from Valpo to Rolling Prairie, and from South Bend to Fort Wayne, became SR 2 again. Later from South Bend to Fort Wayne became US 33.
National Old Trails Road: While most of the way across Indiana, this Auto Trail follows the nation’s first highway, the National Road, it is not entirely the route. While most of the NOTR became Main Market Road 3 in 1917, then SR 3 in 1919, the portion east of Richmond was left out of the state road system. At Richmond, the NOTR turned toward Eaton and Dayton, before connecting back to the original National Road at Springfield. Later, in 1926, that section of the NOTR would become SR 11…then US 35 in 1935.
Dixie Highway: Ironically, that which was the first transcontinental north-south highway would only become part of the state road system in sections. From Danville, Illinois, to Crawfordsville would become SR 33, the Indiana-Michigan state line to Rochester became SR 1, Martinsville to Bedford became SR 22, Bedford to Paoli would become SR, originally Main Market Road, 4, and from Paoli to New Albany would be SR 42. This changed in 1923. SR 42 became part of SR 5, SR 4 became an extension of SR 22, as did the route from Martinsville to Indianapolis, from Indianapolis to Logansport became SR 15. 1926, and the number of state roads the old Dixie Highway became is large: SR 25, SR 29, US 31, SR 34, SR 37, and US 150.
Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean: This road had two routes through Indiana in its history. The first route came into Indiana west of Montezuma. From Montezuma to Danville, the original route became SR 31. By 1923, instead of SR 31 connecting to SR 3 (later US 40) near Cartersburg, it connected to SR 3 west of Indianapolis at where the (original) Rockville Road connected to the National Road. The new route would cross Indiana north of Indianapolis, with the route entering Indiana from Danville, Illinois, with the Dixie Highway. From Crawfordsville to Lebanon, it would become SR 33. From Westfield to Union City, the 1920 road number was SR 37. 1923 saw SR 33 extended from Crawfordsville to Union City, with the SR 37 designation from Anderson to Muncie. In 1926, SR 33 would be changed to SR 32. This was also the route of the Crawfordsville to Anderson Auto Trail.
There are far more routes that crossed the state. I will cover more of them at a later date.
A glance around Indianapolis will show, historically, that the Pennsylvania Railroad had a very impressive footprint in the city. From the old Pennsylvania elevated tracks leading to Union Station and the old freight house, the Transfer Yard along Oliver Street, to Hawthorne Yards. The Belt Railway and Union Station were both 60% owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad interests. But two related facilities are normally forgotten in the grand scheme of things: the Pennsy Athletic Yards and the Pennsylvania Repair Yards.
First, where were these places? The Pennsy Athletic Yards were, strangely, south of the repair yards and the B&O State Street Yard. Between the alley to the east of Harlan Street and Keystone Avenue along the north side of Southeastern Avenue. The property has been the location of a warehouse for Lane Bryant and its successor companies for years. That will be all I will mention about the Athletic Yards for the time being. They were important to the morale of PRR employees, and were the home of many early baseball games. But that is the extent of their transportation importance.
More important is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Repair Shops. The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad (Panhandle) acquired a large yard facility that stretched from what is now Willard Park to the Indianapolis Belt Railway with the consolidation of many lines that created the Pennsylvania Railroad system through Central Indiana. The yard was, at the time it was built, on the outskirts of the city. Looking at a map of the area, one would be understandably mistaken about the location of the yards and their expanse. The Panhandle and the Junction Railway (later a part of the Baltimore & Ohio) shared the same right-of-way from Union Station to just east of the railroad crossing of Pleasant Run, around 3.5 miles east of downtown.
Looking at the yard, there were actually two facilities in roughly the same location. Along the north edge of the right-of-way was the Pennsylvania Yards. South of the right-of-way was (and still is) the State Street Yard of the B&O. The Pennsylvania Yard would be one of the most important facilities in the Indianapolis are until the creation of the Hawthorne Yards in 1916.
The Indianapolis News of 23 April 1904 covers this yard very well. The yard itself, in addition to being a switching facility for railroad cars, was a major repair and scraping facility for the railroad. The roundhouse, with two current property addresses of 1) 2045 E. Washington St., and 2) 50 Koweba Lane, had space for what looks like 20 tracks. East of the repair shops, in 1904, was a place called “The Woods.” This location, with a large number of sycamore trees, was the “locomotive graveyard.” “When an engine is worn out and unfit for further service it is mechanically ‘dead.’ Then some ‘live’ engine pushes it on to one of the four sidetracks back of the shop. There it ‘lies dead.'”
A mention in the article in the Indianapolis News describes the strange way a “locomotive’s lifespan” works. That very week, a locomotive was being pulled into the repair facility. The locomotive in question had been built for the old Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis Railroad. It was built by Reuben Wells to climb the “inclined plane” hill out of Madison. Reuben Wells was “known to mechanics throughout the country as one of the best master mechanics in the last half century.” The engine, known at the time as Pennsylvania Lines #8435, served the Madison Hill very well in its time. And it was taken to Indianapolis for repair. While the engine itself was almost 40 years old at the time, the News pointed out that other engines, with much less time on the rails, were being towed out to “The Woods” for retirement and cannibalization. (For those unaware of that term, that is taking parts off an old piece of equipment to repair another.)
The yard itself survived into the 1950’s. Connections through the yard were made with the Mallory plant along Washington Street. Other assorted service branches existed to businesses along Washington Street. Some of those service branch lines were still in place until Conrail abandoned the line in the early 1980’s. Most of the repair and switching work was moved over to Hawthorne Yards when it opened in 1916. With the removal of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, and its successors, the current owners of the B&O, CSX, expanded the State Street Yards into some of the area that had once been part of the Pennsylvania Repair Yards.
And while the Panhandle had been long gone for many decades, some of the property of the old yards still, for property tax purposes, are listed as being owned by old railroad entities. The property listed at 150 S. Lasalle St. is (tax purpose) owned by the PCC&STL RR (Panhandle), based in Union Station Room 217, Chicago, Illinois, 60606 (according to tax records of the City of Indianapolis). From Keystone Avenue to Rural Street, the tax owner of the property is Conrail in Jacksonville, Florida, which is CSX. The next segment west, from Willard Park to Keystone Avenue, is listed as being owned by Penn Central Corp., 1 E. Fourth St., Cincinnati, Ohio. The last segment, from State Street to the edge of Willard Park, is listed as being owned by Consolidated Rail Corp., 408 Penn Center Blvd., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I would bet that all of these properties are taken care of by one entity, probably CSX, but never got around to fixing the tax ownership.
Below is the ownership information, available from the City of Indianapolis, of each of the properties mentioned in the last paragraph.
The original route of what would become, on 1 October 1926, SR 45 was actually proposed in two sections. The northern section of the road would be marked as an authorized addition to the state road system. The southern section already had been a part of that system.
The official description, as released in the newspapers of the time, was as follows: State Road 45 – In two sections, Bloomington to Cincinnati, Ind., in Monroe and Greene Counties, and Loogootee to Rockport. (The Bloomington – Cincinnati (Ind.) part and a section between Loogootee and Haysville are new roads. The part between Haysville and Rockport is now called State Road 18.)
Along the Wabash River is the town of New Harmony. The town dates from 1814, founded by the Harmony Society under the leadership of George Rapp. The Harmony Society was a group of German Lutherans that had separated from the official church and immigrated to the United States. That group, by 1824, moved back to Pennsylvania. The town then was purchased by Welsh industrialist Robert Owen for the purpose of creating a utopian community. That plan failed, but the community did contribute to American society.
Fast forward around 100 years. On 1 May 1928, the United States Congress chartered a private company, the Big Wabash Bridge Company of Carmi, Illinois, to build and maintain a bridge crossing the Wabash River between Carmi and New Harmony. Built by the Nashville Bridge Company of Nashville, Tennessee, the bridge opened to much fanfare on 30 December 1930. The bridge, as originally designed, is just shy of 2,600 feet long, with a 20 foot wide roadway on 47 spans.
Shortly after opening, the Indiana State Highway Commission made the New Harmony Toll Bridge a part of SR 66. Within a decade of that opening, ownership concerns began occurring. A bill passed through the Indiana General Assembly in 1939 created what was to be called the Indiana Toll Bridge Commission (ITBC). The ITBC was immediately asked by the Harmony Way Bridge Company, the then current owners of the bridge, to purchase the structure. Opposition to the bill creating the ITBC was questioning the end purpose of the commission, as State Senator Roy Dentiston, Rochester, stated, the bill was introduced in “an attempt to pull the irons out of the fire for somebody.” (Source: Indianapolis Star, 12 August 1939)
The bill became law without the signature of then Governor M. Clifford Townsend. Once the ITBC was created, questions also crept up about the fact that the commission was meeting behind closed doors. Meetings were held with various people “in the event the commission should buy the New Harmony bridge.” “‘No commitments have been made to anybody,’ George C. Simler of Corydon, commission president, said.”
The plan to buy the bridge went through in 1940. The ITBC agreed to buy the bridge, built for $640,000, for $945,000, with a surplus fund of $105,000 for emergencies. Governor Townsend had already blocked an effort, in 1939, to purchase the bridge for $1.3 million. The ITBC was in the process of not only buying the bridge at New Harmony, but building a toll bridge at Mauckport. Bonds for the purchase were sold, dated 1 October 1940 with a maturation date of 1 October 1960. But, the ITBC pointed out, that tolls collected from the bridge would not only retire the bonds in eight to ten years, but that the bridge would be made free to use around the same time. Operation costs were estimated to be $15,000 to $16,000 a year including painting, maintenance, and insurance.
The fallout from both the creation of the ITBC and the pending purchase of the Harmony Way Bridge was massive. Lawsuits were filed in the matter. The Indiana General Assembly heard a bill repealing the creation of the commission. The biggest complaint was the purchase price of the bridge. A. S. Thomas, representing the Indiana Farm Bureau, “said engineers have estimated that the bridge could now be built for approximately $475,000.” (Source: Indianapolis Star, 29 January 1941) “We consider the purchase price not based on good judgment. I am not trying to keep anyone in southern or western Indiana from having a bridge, but we are interested in the people who use that bridge,” Thomas added. Attorney for the ITBC, Lew O’Bannon (grandfather of future Governor Frank O’Bannon), explained that “at the present rate of income from the bridge it would be paid for in approximately 10 years and then converted into a free bridge.”
In the end, the state did not purchase the New Harmony bridge. Later in 1941, the United States Congress created a joint Illinois-Indiana agency called the White County Bridge Commission (WCBC) to purchase the structure for $895,000. This would be the organization that still owns the bridge to this day.
Tolling facilities had been on the eastern end of the bridge until replaced, in 1951, with the toll house that still exists on the Illinois side of the river.
In 1957, the Army Corps of Engineers warned that the structure was in danger of being destroyed or cut off by the Wabash River. (Source: Terre Haute Tribune, 31 May 1957) Testimony occurred before the House Public Works Appropriation Subcommittee asking for $405,000 for the shoring up of the west bank of the Wabash. The river had been developing a series of new bends. These threatened the stability of the bridge. The new channel being created by nature could have cut the bridge off from Illinois completely. Louis C. Rabaut, Democrat Representitive from Michigan, pointed out that during the Wabash Flood of 1943, the New Harmony bridge was the only crossing of the Wabash that remained open.
In 1961, the operations of the White County Bridge Commission came under Congressional scrutiny. Senator Robert S. Kerr, Democrat of Oklahoma, Chairman of the Senate Public Works Committee, announced that “his committee now wants to learn all about the manner in which the bridge at New Harmony, Ind., is operated. He said full investigation and hearings will be held.” (Source: Indianapolis Star, 22 September 1961) The whole ordeal was started by Representative Winfield K. Denton of Indiana, who had been trying to end the White County Commission for the previous six years. The effort was to free the bridge of tolls. Denton had put in a “secret amendment” into a bridge auditing bill to allow the Secretary of Commerce to name a new commission for the bridge, after wiping out the then current one. Denton stated that the facility had collected $4 million in tolls since the creation of the commission, but was still a toll bridge. The General Accounting Office had issued a scathing report in 1955 about the commission, prompting the entire scenario. After these hearings, the commission was left in place.
Funding became a serious issue, coming to a head in 2001, when the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs granted the WCBC a total of $120,000 for upgrades to the facility. The plan was to close the bridge at the end of 2001. At this point, the facility was in such poor condition that neither state wanted to take over operations and maintenance. It was, according to the Indianapolis Star of 12 December 2001, estimated that $2.2 million to $3.6 million would be required to bring the bridge up to Federal standards. It was also estimated that it would cost $25 million to replace.
According to the same article, the bridge had dropped its tolling earlier in 2001. This didn’t last very long. Daily average crossings, in 1999, numbered 2,660 vehicles. In October 2001 it was announced that the bridge would be closed by the end of that year. That ended up not happening. Officials of New Harmony were pleased with that news, as “closing the bridge would double the driving distance between the two towns (Carmi and New Harmony) from seven to 14 miles. That could be dangerous for emergency vehicles or people trying to reach a hospital.”
September 2007 did see the closing of the facility…but not permanently. Damage to one of the concrete piers warranted the closing for emergency repairs. At this time, the WCBC was operating on an annual budget of $460,000, not enough to keep the bridge in good condition. Again, the commission asked the departments of transportation of both Illinois and Indiana to take over the bridge. And again, this was shot down due to the cost of bringing the bridge up to federal standards. The bridge would reopen in April 2008.
In September 2011, it was made public that the bridge was in need of $8.4 million in repairs to bring it out of “structurally deficient” status. (Source: Seymour Tribune, 30 September 2011) This status was also applied at the time to the Sherman Minton Bridge carrying Interstate 64 over the Ohio River near Louisville. The difference between to two structures was that the Sherman Minton Bridge was a state owned facility. It also carried much more traffic. The end of the bridge’s useful life came to an end in May 2012 when it was announced that it would be closed at noon on 29 May 2012. This was announced by the WCBC on 21 May 2012. Unfortunately, that 29 May date was pushed up to immediately, as in 21 May 2012.
Today, the bridge still stands. It has been cut off from both ends, abandoned in place. Indiana SR 66 and Illinois SR 14 are still maintained up to a point near the approaches to the old structure. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, having received that honor in 2007.
Editor’s Note: For those that like roads, this post covers the Jeffersonville Road (future US 31), Madison State Road (US 31 and SR 7) and the Michigan Road and its Auto Trail variety (US 421).
Near the end of the 19th Century, with bicycling becoming one of the most popular means of transportation, many organizations put together meetings of “wheelmen” across the nation. In 1896, the League of American Wheelmen, or LAW, held their national meet in Louisville. The plan was to have Hoosier bicyclists meet in Indianapolis and take a two day ride south to the Kentucky city on the Ohio River. Unfortunately, as is typical in Indiana in the summer, the weather turned hot and dry. This would cause the LAW Indiana division to cancel the ride at the last minute. This didn’t stop some of the riders from deciding to do the run anyway. Those riders were worn out by the end of the two days.
In August 1898, the LAW national meet would be held in Indianapolis. Some riders from southern Indiana and northern Kentucky decided to try the 1896 ride in reverse. But, as printed in the Indianapolis News of 17 June 1898, the route from Louisville would be rough. The route would cover basically the same route that would, in 1917, become Main Market Road 1, and later in 1926, US 31. “The first half of the journey, in which the roads are of a mixed character and very hilly, but in August are in fairly rideable (sic) condition.”
“The run really begins at Jeffersonville, which, by road, is 133 miles from Indianapolis.” I mentioned that the route would later become OSR 1, but the start of the route would not. OSR 1 would go through New Albany, which is just west of Jeffersonville. Historically, the two routes would come together just north of both towns. Seven miles into the ride, the route enters Hamburg. Soon two villages, very close together, would be next on the route: Sellersburg and Speeds. At the 17 mile point, the town of Memphis in encountered. To this point, the road is in rough condition between Jeffersonville and Memphis.
Another 5.5 miles north, and the riders enter Henryville. Scottsburg is another 14.5 miles later. The next part of the journey is a level earth road to Uniontown, 15 miles north of Scottsburg. A good condition road carries the riders the ten miles to Seymour. At Seymour, “a long stretch of macadam” begins, running to Franklin. Along the way, the 14 miles through Rockford, Jonesville and Azalia “is rough.” Between Azalia and Columbus, a distance of 15 miles, the hilly sections of southern Indiana gives was to a level road. “From there on there will be no further trouble with the hills.”
From Columbus, the riders will travel 12.5 miles to Edinburgh, through Taylorsville, then another 10.5 miles to Franklin, through Amity. Most of this route, historically, was the Indianapolis to Madison State Road. After Franklin, the 20 miles to Indianapolis was a very popular ride for bicyclists. Again, this is part of the Madison State Road. The road from Franklin was maintained very well, and riders will find the route in excellent condition. There are two small hills between Franklin and Indianapolis “which will, however, cause no difficulty to the average rider.”
The route above was the shortest of the routes between Jeffersonville and Indianapolis. There were three routes planned. The other two routes would take riders through Madison. The first of those two routes would connect to the one mentioned above at Columbus.
The run from Jeffersonville to Madison totalled 44 miles. As is typical of southern Indiana, the travel would be hilly the entire way. The first 13 miles, which takes riders to Charlestown, was in fairly good condition, as the road was macadam. The road conditions go down hill from there, as the route connecting the 12 miles from Charlestown to New Washington was a very poor condition earth road. The next 13 miles to Hanover were on a road that was in better condition. Fairly good travel connected Hanover to Madison.
After climbing out of Madison via the old Madison State Road, now roughly SR 7, was a very hilly 50 mile ride to Columbus, “which will make walking a greater pleasure than wheeeling.” The road conditions are described as “this is, however, the old Madison road, well known in the early days of Indiana and, while for late years it has not been kept up properly, it would not be a bad road if the wheelmen are hill-proof.” This route passes through Dupont, Grayford, Vernon, Queensville and Elizabethtown.
The third route climbs out of Madison along the old Michigan Road. Like the current US 421, the described route varies from the historic road in that it goes through Versailles. The 26 mile section of the route between Versailles and Madison is macadam and earth, and fairly level. Another six miles of macadam, but rough, road takes the riders into Osgood. Fairly good roads cover the 19 miles to Greensburg. At Napoleon, the described route and the Michigan Road again become one heading toward Greensburg.
Two bad hills, and earth roads, are encountered in the 22 miles from Greensburg to Shelbyville. After Shelbyville, the road is macadamized, or gravel, all the way to Indianapolis. After Fairland, there is one bad hill, the last one encountered before completing the 96.5 miles between Indianapolis and Madison.
The distance of the routes described above, according to the Indianapolis News, are as follows: Jeffersonville-Columbus-Indianapolis, 133 miles; Jeffersonville-Madison-Columbus-Indianapolis, 137 miles; Jeffersonville-Madison-Greensburg-Indianapolis, 140 miles. This trip was designed to take two days. It is possible, however, that the journey could be done in one day, making those riders that complete it members of what was known as the “Century Club,” those that complete a ride on 100 miles or more in a day.
The League of American Wheelmen, founded in 1880, still exists to this day. It is now called the League of American Bicyclists. It is online at www.bikeleague.org. Their history page states, not inaccurately, that “the success of the League in its first advocacy efforts ultimately led to our national highway system.”
Indiana Transportation History 