Dandy Trail – Revisited

In the early days of the automobile, the Hoosier Motor Club created a scenic tour of Marion County. That tour, an 88 mile journey through the countryside around Indianapolis, was named the Dandy Trail. When one looks at a map, the only part of Dandy Trail that exists by that name is in the northwestern part of the county. And almost none of it was part of the original scenic tour route.

This particular route has been covered by me before in a post called “Dandy Trail.” Jim Grey, another blogger and co-admin of the Facebook companion to this blog, also covered it with his article “It’s 1921, and you’re taking a pleasure drive on the Dandy Trail.” But today, I want to put the Dandy Trail, and its changes, into a historical context.

Starting off with an overview of the section of the original Dandy Trail from about 65th Street south to its original connection with Crawfordsville Road from back in 1953. Above 56th Street, it wandered through the Eagle Creek valley on the west side of that stream. It crossed the creek at 56th Street, then followed the lay of the land on the east side of Eagle Creek. From 56th Street south, it was also mostly a dirt road…never having been improved over its 30+ years of existence.

The connection to Crawfordsville Road was made at what is now called Salt Lake Road, although, as one can tell by looking at the map, that name was actually applied to what is now 34th Street. The current westerly bend of the road, connecting it to the dotted line in the bottom left corner of the snippet, came later. I will cover that. That dotted red line is County Club Road.

The next snippet shows the next point of interest…crossing Eagle Creek. Now, I have shown this several times, but I have not been able to do so with maps that actually show the lay of the land before the reservoir was built.

The northern end of the interest area shows the town of Traders Point. The following snippet is from 1953, as well. Traders Point was located on the old Lafayette Road, just north of Big Eagle Creek.

Several changes occurred in the path of the Dandy Trail between 1953 and 1967. First, the building of Eagle Creek reservoir. Second, the building of Interstate 74. And, as show in the following map snippet, the almost complete removal of Dandy Trail between 38th and 46th Streets. Also, the southern end was connected to Country Club Road, as it is today.

And as shown in this map, from 46th Street north to the northern end of this particular quad of USGS topo map, most of the original route was either placed in the flood plain, or in the actual reservoir. One can still see the outline of the old bridge over Eagle Creek near 56th Street in the topographical data. At this time, Dandy Trail didn’t connect between 46th Street and 56th Street.

The northern end didn’t fair much better. Traders Point, a town prior to the building of the reservoir, was no more. But it wasn’t because it was in the reservoir…it was in the flood plain. I will post a link to that particular map to show exactly how much area the reservoir was expected to cover in case of emergency. This particular map shows the area in 1966. The road that is broken by Interstate 65 in the center of the snippet is the original Dandy Trail. Notice that it skirts the northern bank of the reservoir. It is still there today, although accessibility is questionable.

The last image I want to share is the 1967 topo map that had been updated showing conditions in 1980. The purple marks on this map show the updates. A new map was not made, just modifications to the old one. This shows the new Dandy Trail from 38th Street north to 56th Street.

In 1980, 46th Street became Dandy Trail as it turned north toward Eagle Creek Park. Today, that traffic situation is reversed, as 46th Street turns south to become Dandy Trail. Also, the intersection at 38th Street, which was 38th Street ending at Dandy Trail, has been changed over the years to become 38th Street westbound turning south to become Dandy Trail.

Very little of what is called Dandy Trail today is what was originally given that name. But the name survives…as if there is still a connection to the past. The name Dandy Trail seems strange on the Hoosier landscape. But it remains, even if we have to explain why it’s there.

The link to the Traders Point topo map showing the flood plain of the Eagle Creek Reservoir according to the United States Geological Service is this: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ht-bin/tv_browse.pl?id=16e9e185f52a80db3128924a7ab11716

Indianapolis: Sand Street

Northeast of where Kentucky Avenue crosses the White River, there is a short, and barricaded, street that connects south southeast to McCarty Street. It is used as access to a parking lot for Lucas Oil Stadium today. Looking at it closely, one can see the remnants of the old stone paving. It is called Sand Street. And where it is today isn’t always where it was. But throughout the history of the city of Indianapolis, it has been really close to where it is today.

Google Earth image of the stone paving of Sand Street, Indianapolis. This image was captured on 27 September, 2020. The Google Image was taken in August 2018.

1875 map of Sand Street in Indianapolis.

The general location of today’s Sand Street was, at one point, actually in the White River. In 1875, the original Sand Street formed the end of Kentucky Avenue at the time. It was crossed by a branch from the Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad that extended south to Pogues Run, located at the corner of what is now S. Dakota Street and Terrace Avenue (if it weren’t private property). Looking at the 1875 map to the left, one would notice that the intersection of McCarty and Sand Streets doesn’t exist, as it would be in the river.

Due to its “insignificant” nature, Sand Street found itself on and off maps for many years. The 1889 Atlas of Marion County shows that the White River channel had been moved, but that Sand Street was not included on the map. The location of the street, however, is, as shown by the lonely little line connecting to Kentucky Avenue and the Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad. Notice that crossing the White River was done at River Avenue, which connected the intersection of River and Oliver Avenues to a bridge that connected south of Greenlawn Cemetery. This bridge had been in place for many years, and would be for years to come.

Sand Street would again appear on maps in 1894 and 1898. It would be shown as running along the original path, not a straight line between Kentucky Avenue and McCarty Street, which still didn’t connect past one block west of West Street. It should be noted that a second crossing of White River was completed in the years between 1894 and 1898, as the Kentucky Avenue bridge was built.

The earliest map reference that I have seen that shows Sand Street in its present location is this 1926 snippet. The previous map that I have found, 1914, doesn’t show Sand Street at all. It should be noted that the two crossings of White River are still River and Kentucky Avenues, although the River Avenue crossing is labelled as Oliver Avenue on this map. Within a decade, the river crossing situation would change.

The first aerial photograph of the area that I have found comes from 1937, and is included below. It shows the new Oliver Avenue bridge across White River, connecting to Kentucky Avenue just south of the intersection of Sand and Kentucky. At this time, the entire area is very industrial in nature, and two branches from the Panhandle (formerly Vandalia, and before that, Indianapolis & Vincennes) curve across Kentucky Avenue on either side of Sand Street. The one on the east side of Sand still heads south towards industrial areas along Dakota Street (have to be careful, it is just Dakota Street…the fact that it runs north and south can create confusion!).

1937 MapIndy aerial photograph of the area of Sand Street, Kentucky Avenue, McCarty Street, et al.

With the exceptions of widenings of Kentucky and Oliver Avenues, and the curving of the Oliver Avenue bridge (between 1956 and 1962) on the east end to connect to the intersection of Kentucky Avenue and McCarty Street, not much changed in the area of Sand Street for many years. Yes, the plants along the street became abandoned and in poor shape, and the railroad connections that cross on either side of the street were removed, the street itself continued in place, and in use.

In 2009, the industrial buildings on either side of Sand Street were demolished, leaving the street itself as an abandoned reminder of what was. 2010 saw it fenced off from the McCarty Street end for the first time. The Google image below shows the Kentucky Avenue end as it appeared in 2009.

Google image of Sand Street, August 2009. If you look carefully, you can see the stone paving that is still in place today.

As mentioned above, Sand Street is still accessible…on days where parking downtown is needed. It is a privately owned street now, and has the consistency of an alley anywhere else in the city. Since it was basically vacated by the City of Indianapolis, maintenance is taken care of by the owners.

As an aside, the Indianapolis News, on 16 September 1979, ran a story called “Paving the Way to Yesteryear,” which included two photos of the granite paving of Sand Street. I will share those here.

The Indianapolis News, 16 September 1979.

Bloomington, 1910: Part 2

My last blog entry focused on getting in and out of Bloomington using maps from 1910. Today, obviously, is part two. Quick overview. Bloomington was a founded as the county seat in Monroe County, set in a location that was fairly accessible, and given a state university.

First, I want to focus on the Bedford Pike, shown on the map to the left as the red line. Yes, by the name, it is obvious where this road was going when it left Bloomington. However, it was a continuation of the North Pike mentioned in Part One: the Paoli State Road.

Bedford was merely the next county seat on its way to the town of Paoli from Indianapolis. By the time the road had acquired the name “Pike,” toll road companies, or “turnpikes,” had carved the original road into many pieces. From Bloomington, those pieces included the North Pike and the Bedford Pike.

With the creation of the Indiana State Highway Commission, the road would fall into state possession in 1920 as State Road 22. With the Great Renumbering, it would become the original route of the much moved SR 37.

The Bedford Pike leaves Bloomington to the south using Rogers Street. South of the city, it connects to Walnut Street, which started life back south of Bloomington as the next subject road.

The blue line on this map shows the South Pike. Sections of this old turnpike to Chapel Hill have been moved and removed over the years. The South Pike starts on Walnut Street, but before it gets to Winslow Road, the old road turns to the southeast on what is now Walnut Pike, to carry over to what is now called Walnut Street Pike, the southern extension of Henderson Street. It follows this Pike to the end, where it turns east on what is now called Fairfax Road. The old road then travelled its way across the Monroe County landscape to Chapel Hill, an unincorporated community in the southeast corner of Monroe County.

Part of this old road is now completely gone. In 1960, the Army Corps of Engineers started damming Salt Creek to create Lake Monroe. This deluged part of the old South Pike near Fairfax Beach.

Two other roads leaving the town of Bloomington at that time were the West Pike and the Rockport Road.

Although it starts heading southwest from Bloomington, the Rockport Road turns move southerly as it makes its way towards Springville. Today, the old road is still called Rockport, starting at the old Paoli State Road (Rogers Street).

The West Pike, the purple line on the map, leaves Bloomington to the west, on roughly the same route as what is now Bloomfield Road. The West Pike was part of the state road connecting Bloomington to Bloomfield. Today, it forms the basic route of what is now SR 45 to a point west of Stanford, an unincorporated community in Van Buren Township

The two railroads that connected Bloomington to the rest of the state were the Monon (actually, the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville) and the Indianapolis Southern (later Illinois Central).

The first railroad to town appeared as the New Albany & Salem, which had been completed between Salem and Crawfordsville in 1854, connecting Bloomington. Five years later, the name of the road was changed to the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago Railroad, to better show its expanse. As the road expanded, it acquired access to Indianapolis, but not from Bloomington directly. In 1897, the road changed its name to the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville.

Direct access, by rail, from Bloomington to Indianapolis was the Indianapolis Southern Railway. It was chartered in 1899 to build from Indianapolis south to Greene County. It would not be allowed to build in Indianapolis until 1902. The rail lie was completed in 1906 from Indianapolis, through Bloomington, to Effingham, Illinois. The Indianapolis Southern wasn’t a strong railroad, and had been loaned much money by the Illinois Central to complete the route. When the Indianapolis Southern fell into receivership, it became solely owned by the Illinois Central. This happened in 1911.

Today, the only railroad that serves Bloomington is the Indiana Railroad Company, the successor to that section of the Illinois Central. The Monon had been removed, as it was mostly duplicate routes to its successors: Louisville & Nashville; Seaboard Coast Lines; and CSX.

Bloomington, 1910: Part 1

While looking for older maps on the USGS TopoView website, I found one that really sparked my interest. One of the early towns in Indiana was Bloomington. It was established very early, and the college there, the state financed Indiana University, was also located there from the very beginning. Early descriptions of the place describe a pleasant town, with pleasant landscape, but without large quantities of non-poisonous water, or water at all.

But how did one get to to the town? If the state college was there, how did students reach it before all the roads became hard surface and passible all year round?

This first map shows three major roads coming from Bloomington towards the west and northwest. Two of these are marked on this map as Pikes, or former toll roads.

Starting with the blue line, the Ellettsville Pike lead there…to Ellettsville. It was part of a bigger road that was the Bloomington-Spencer State Road built in the 1800’s. Today, it is called Arlington Road leaving the city of Bloomington. It would form the basic route of the original state road 32. This SR 32 would on 1 October 1926, become part of the new SR 46.

The red line leaving Bloomington, still called by the name listed on the 1910 map above, is the Vernal Pike. It led from Bloomington to the Vernal School, 5.5 miles west of the town, and with a branch to the Vernal Church, the same distance. The Vernal School was located near where Vernal Pike and Oard Road come together. The Vernal Church was on the northwest corner of what is now the intersection of Howard and Louden Roads west of Bloomington. At the school, the Vernal Pike turned southwest to connect with the green line on the map above.

The green line, now the basic route of what is now SR 48, is the Whitehall Road. It connected Bloomington to the town of Whitehall in Owen County, just across the Monroe-Owen County line. Whitehall is located at the intersection of Howard Road (mentioned above when it came to the Vernal Church) and SR 43, the current name given to the old Whitehall Road. Thus, there were three routes connecting the two towns of Bloomington and Whitehall.

The next road I want to focus on comes north out of Bloomington. It is called the North Pike on this map, and was the road that leads to Martinsville. It was part of the larger Paoli State Road connecting Indianapolis to Paoli. It travelled through Martinsville and Waverly. It had many names between these points. At the northern end, it was called the Bluff Road. That was due to the fact that it connected Indianapolis to the Bluffs of the White River at Waverly.

From Waverly, it was called the Martinsville State Road, winding its way through the Hoosier landscape between the two towns.

From Martinsville, it did more winding on its way south to the Monroe County seat of Bloomington.

When it was added to the state highway system in 1919, it would be given the number State Road 22 between Martinsville and Bloomington. By 1923, the old connection from Martinsville to Indianapolis was given the same State Road 22 designation.

With the Great Renumbering of 1 October 1926, old State Road 22 would be changed to State Road 37. Over time, the section that is shown as the green line on this map would be bypassed several times. The route is now called Old State Road 37 after it leaves Bloomington proper, where it connected to the then SR 37 in Morgan County south of Martinsville. It no longer connects to SR 37 directly, as that road has been converted into Interstate 69 at the old connection point.

Due to a lack of resources, tracing to old paths east out of Bloomington is difficult using Topoview. However, what is now 10th Street in Bloomington would wind its way north and east from the city as the Unionville Road. This would later become part of SR 45. Third Street east out of town would wind its way through the hills of Monroe and Brown Counties, connecting to the Brown County seat of Nashville. This would later form the core of SR 46. It was originally (in 1923) part of State Road 26, which prior to 1923 only connected Columbus to Nashville.

In part 2, I will cover the three major roads that left Bloomington to the south. These are the Rockport Road, the Bedford Pike and the South Pike. I will also be mentioning the two railroads: one is the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville (known as the Monon) and the other is the Indianapolis Southern, which just started appearing on maps around 1910. The Indianapolis Southern would become the Illinois Central, and is now known as the Indiana Railroad.

US 50 West from Aurora

Today, I want to focus on US 50 on the other side of the state. Yesterday, I covered the original US 50 from Vincennes to Wheatland. Today, the last eight miles heading into Aurora. When the Indiana State Highway Commission was created in 1917, the future US 50 was included…but not as a single road. From Mitchell north to Bedford, then east, it was original state road 4. From Mitchell west, it was original state road 5.

The other thing I want to look at it the location of the original road. Unless you have driven in that section of Indiana, it is hard to fathom the difficulty in building a road through southern Indiana. Most of the state is (relatively) flat. Along the Ohio River, not so much. As someone whose family came from Pennsylvania, I realize the sheer insanity of building a road where the land has to be followed…not plowed through.

In northern and central Indiana, most roads can be built in a straightish line. Obviously, there are hills one has to skirt, and rivers to cross. But most of the land is relatively flat. That ends about 40 miles south of Indianapolis. And abruptly. I am only going to use snippets from one map (and a quick Google map) for this post…that of the 1943 USGS Topographic Map of the Aurora, Indiana, quadrangle. I have made five snippets…one a complete overview, and the other four are basically two miles at a time. I will be going from east to west in this case.

I know this is hard to see. That is why I have broken it down into smaller chunks. But this gives the overview of the whole area. Consider that each of the brown lines on this map are 10 feet changes in elevation. This gives a whole new meaning to up and down, eh?

The original US 50 entered Aurora from the north on what is now Main Street. North of Hogan Creek, Google Maps lists it as George Street. Where George Street meets US 50 north of Aurora, US 50 pretty much follows the old path, for a while, on its way to Lawrenceburg. A turn west on Third Street, and following the old road is still possible. Another turn south on Bridgeway Street, then west on Fourth Street, then original US 50 leaves the small burgh of Aurora. Google Maps shows the old road as Conwell Street. Before it connects into the current US 50, it turns south on Indiana Avenue, still staying south and east of the current US highway.

The problem with following the old road from here is that it has been cut off from the rest of the highway system. Indiana Avenue, before it would connect to current US 50 again, it curves east away from its old path. The Google map snippet to the left shows a blue line where the old road crossed the area that is now US 50, changing from what is now Indiana Avenue into Trester Hill Road.

As you can see from the topo maps of before the new road was built, the frontier path, later state road, that became US 50 originally skirted the edges of the topographical lay of the land. Without looking closer, I can not tell if it is a valley or the top of the ridge that the old road follows. A look on Google Earth shows it may be a valley that the road is keeping to.

The last four miles that I will be covering in this entry are pretty much using the old road as it was created in the early to mid 1800’s. Yes, the road is that old. The area that the road follows is called the Mount Tabor Ridge on this map. And the old road tries to keep climbs and descends as small as possible. This made sense, since getting horses, or even worse, oxen, to climb a hill was a chore in itself. Now, add a wagon, or saddlebags, and it got worse. There are stories abound that tell of someone hurt, or worse, killed trying to traverse steep hills.

This map shows the end of today’s coverage area. Not that I don’t want to keep going west from here. The next topo map available is the Dillsboro quadrangle, but it is dated 1958.

Following the original US 50 through the area gives an idea of what was required when a road was commissioned to go from point A to point B. Just looking at this route shows why the first team that went into “the wild” when it came to building a road would be the surveyors. Of course, this has always been true, for any road built in history. It wouldn’t have been good to draw a straight line on a map and just told someone to build that straight line. Especially through the landscape of southern Indiana.

The Old Louisville Road

In the early days of Indiana, and even pre-Indiana, transportation, there was a trail leading from the Falls of the Ohio, at New Albany, to a ford in the Wabash River at Vincennes. That trail, or most of it, was an old trace created not by man, but by bison. It was called, for most of its length, the Buffalo Trace.

I have covered it in a previous entry here on the Indiana Transportation History blog. Today, I want to cover the section east from Vincennes to Wheatland. I have found a couple of old USGS topographic maps that show the old road connecting the two labelled as “Old Louisville Road.”

When I did the “Road Trip 1926” series entry on US 50, available here, some people asked me about the location of the US 50 route from Vincennes to Wheatland. I placed it, according to what I could figure out from available state Official maps, north of the Baltimore & Ohio tracks. And that was the accurate placement. For 1926.

What is now called Wheatland Road was shown on old maps as the Old Louisville Road. The first two maps show the Old Louisville Road, still mostly dirt and mud, as it was in 1942. The yellow line is the old road.

That is the original route of the 1923 version of SR 5. When the Great Renumbering happened in 1926, it became the official route of US 50…for a short time. The state was already replacing SR 5/US 50 to track south of the railroad when the routes were renumbered. It wouldn’t be long before the new US 50, connecting Vincennes and Wheatland, would be in place…with a much better surface and straighter route.

The above map is from Wheatland west, showing the old Louisville Road before and after the connection with what would become SR 550. This map was published by the USGS in 1944. The old road swoops into Wheatland from the northwest, connecting to the new road at that town. But east of Wheatland, US 50 was the old road.

A road trip involving US 50 would be incomplete if one didn’t use the route above, as it was the original US 50. There is only one section that is impassible today, as it was ripped out when the Vincennes bypass was built. The below snippet from Google Maps, available directly here, show where the old road would cross the railroad tracks in a straight line from Washington Avenue to Old Wheatland Road. This was the jumping off point for the first move of US 50, with Washington Avenue turning more east and south.

I would love to share maps of the Vincennes end of the road. However, the first available from the USGS online is from 1965, after the bypass had been built. The 1915 map available covers too much territory to show anything, and the old road, and Vincennes, are pretty close to the edge of the map. And there is no map available east of that location for that early.

The 1942 map is available from Topoview at the following link: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ht-bin/tv_browse.pl?id=def30bcaf7088af1f2e39b12f87ff2bd.

The 1944 map can be found at this link: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ht-bin/tv_browse.pl?id=810cc3befc24241b312a2bbcfb66be68

Indianapolis: Indiana Avenue Bridge Over Fall Creek

Early in the history of town of Indianapolis, when the state started building roads to connect the fledgling capitol to the rest of the state, a road was built from the northwest corner of the original Mile Square, traveling northwest. That road would be called both the Lafayette Road and the Crawfordsville Road, since it went to both. After the road crossed Fall Creek one mile north of the center of the town, it took a route closer to White River. That section would later be called Speedway Avenue and Waterway Boulevard. But the bridge over Fall Creek, connecting the two sections, would take nearly two decades for a true resolution. And it required the removing of several streets, including the historic Lafayette/Crawfordsville Road.

1937 MapIndy Aerial photograph of the Indiana Avenue & 10th Street area.

The bridge is question is shown on the above 1937 MapIndy photo. At that time, the intersection at the bridge was a confusing jumble of streets running in different directions. At what became the intersection of 10th Street and Indiana Avenue, there were also connections to Locke Street (heading south past the City (Wishard) Hospital, and Torbett Street running north of 10th heading east. Many people still referred to 10th Street between this intersection and the White River Parkway as Fall Creek Parkway…but that was its old name by the time this photo was taken.

Indiana Avenue had become a major route for people leaving downtown Indianapolis for the northwest suburbs. The northern end of both of Indiana and Speedway Avenues were connected to 16th Street, which ran west from Indiana Avenue to the Emrichsville Bridge over White River. The state had connected separate sections of 16th Street from Indiana Avenue east to Northwestern Avenue as part of State Road 34. Traffic, therefore, was heavy across the bridge.

That was until the summer of 1936.

It was then that the city of Indianapolis limited the bridge traffic to five tons. Trucks and busses found themselves having to go around the closed bridge by using 10th and 16th Streets. In the fall of 1938, the bridge was closed completely to all traffic. Street cars found themselves now being rerouted around the snarl. Indiana and Speedway Avenues north of Fall Creek simply became cul-du-sacs because they had no southern end at all.

The Indianapolis News of 7 May 1943, in an editorial piece, mentions that in 1936, when trucks were banned from the bridge, the Board of Works announced a $110,000 plan to build a new bridge on the site. “In the fall of 1938, the bridge was closed to traffic and a year later the city was promising solemnly to produce a new one almost immediately.”

That was followed in the fall of 1940 by the City Council and the City Engineer coming together to talk about building a new bridge for Indiana Avenue. The City Engineer was “ordered to determine ‘by the next meeting’ the precise status of the matter.” That went nowhere as it was in 1941 that a discussion was held about finding an old bridge from somewhere else to replace the old Indiana Avenue bridge that had, at that point, been completely closed to traffic for three years.

As mentioned above, the editorial was run in the News in May 1943. The bridge was still closed to traffic.

A week later, on 12 May 1943, the Indianapolis News ran another editorial on the same subject. “Mayor Tyndall expresses in one short sentence what many have had in the back of their minds for years about the Indiana avenue bridge over Fall creek. ‘If the army had to cross it, the bridge would be fixed over night,’ he declared. The bridge has stood year after year, closed to all but pedestrian traffic, while tens of thousands of motorists and others have been forced to detour by way of West and Sixteenth streets to get to the baseball grounds and parts of the city northwest of there.”

The News goes on to mention that many times over the past four and a half years, attempts have been made to remedy the situation. Without result. Some of the blame was placed on pending flood control and prevention improvements to Fall Creek. Those improvements still hadn’t happened. The News was advocating for a solution to the bridge issue sooner than later.

And action was taken when Mayor Robert H. Tyndall cut the ribbon on 1 November 1944 to open the newly repaired Indiana Avenue bridge over Fall Creek. Traffic could begin moving across the facility again. Trolley traffic on the Riverside line would start again on 27 November 1944. And everything was great. For almost six years.

The headline in the Indianapolis News of 24 March 1950 read “Indiana Avenue Bridge Out for Baseball Fans.” Simply, it meant that the old bridge over Fall Creek was closed to traffic again. The sticking point, again, came down to whether to spend $35,000 to patch the bridge, or wait until the flood control improvements made it a requirement to replace the bridge. The flood control project, which was estimated to be around $1,000,000, was still in the works as it had been since the early 1940’s.

As it turned out, less than a month later, the city council voted to appropriate $120,000 to fix the old bridge. This was required before bidding could begin on the the contract to fix it. It would seem that it would take longer than expected. It became a political issue when, in October 1951, just prior to the Marion County elections, the political party in charge was blasted for not taking care of a bridge that not only served baseball fans and residents of the northwestern section of the city, but served as an emergency route to Wishard Hospital, which sat just south of the bridge.

The Indianapolis Star said it best in the first paragraph of a story with the headline “City To Spend $120,000 For New Bridge” on 9 April 1952. That first paragraph read “the city is going to sink $120,000 into a new bridge which may be torn down within three years.” While Mayor Clark of Indianapolis was telling the City Engineer to rebuild the bridge, he was also telling the engineer to continue looking into getting Federal money to move Fall Creek 100 feet to the north as part of the flooding control and prevention program.

The flood control issue would finally be resolved in 1959. On 9 August 1960, the old Indiana Avenue bridge was closed once again, this time for good. The bridge was immediately closed and dismantled. It would be replaced by a four lane facility. The flood control project would also require the creek to actually move 100 feet to the north of its then current position, a rerouting of Speedway Avenue, to be renamed Waterway Boulevard, to a new connection with Stadium (Indiana) Avenue two blocks northwest of its historic location, and a removal of Locke Street and Fall Creek Parkway East Drive for the intersection at 10th and Indiana. (The old Torbett Street had long before been cut off from the intersection, becoming a driveway for the old YMCA that stood on the northeast corner of Fall Creek Parkway and 10th Street.)

The new channel for Fall Creek and the new Indiana Avenue bridge was completed in July 1961, as shown in the above photograph from the Indianapolis News of 17 July 1961. The bridge would be opened to traffic as soon as reconstruction of the intersection at the southern foot of the bridge was completed on 1 August 1961. The below MapIndy aerial photograph from 1962 shows the reconfiguration of the intersection, the new location of Speedway Avenue, and the removal of the ends of Locke Street and Fall Creek Parkway East Drive.

1962 MapIndy aerial photo of the area around the Indiana Avenue bridge over Fall Creek.

I-65 and I-465 On The Northwest Side – A Pictorial History

Today, I want to use MapIndy and USGS Topographic maps to show the progression of the interchange between I-65 and I-465 on the northwest side of Marion, just east of Eagle Creek Park. I am going to have four aerial photos in this entry: 1941, 1956, 1962 and 1972. Also, small snippets of several topo maps are used. Strangely, the 1941 and 1956 are almost identical.

1941 MapIndy aerial photo of the area around the I-65/I-465 interchange on the northwest side of Marion County.

1956 *MapIndy aerial photo of the area around the I-65/I-465 interchange on the northwest side of Marion County.*

1961 USGS Topographic Map of the interchange between I-65, I-465, and future SR 100, now known as I-465.

The 1961 USGS Topo map shows the pending SR 100 connection. Bridges appear in the 1962 aerial, especially Lafayette Road over I-465. It should also be noted that on the USGS maps, the pending I-465 was also marked SR 100. Also, what is now I-65 fed directly into Lafayette Road at this point. This made sense, since I-65 was the replacement, between Indianapolis and Labanon, of US 52…which followed Lafayette Road in this area.

The next photo is from 1962. The missing section in the picture had not changed much, if at all, from the 1956. The Dandy Trail did not cross Eagle Creek at a right angle to the creek. It had been replaced by a bridge on 56th Street. And the reservoir still hasn’t been built. Both interstates, I-65 going straight through the area, and I-465 veering off to the south, catch the eastern edge of the park like area west of Lafayette Road north of 62nd Street. That park like area is listed on the 1953 USGS topographic map as “Eagle Creek Forest.”

1953 USGS Topographic Map of Eagle Creek Forest.

It should be noted that 62nd Street was completely orphaned west of the interstate when it was built. Reed Road, which at the time before the building of the reservoir and the park ended at 62nd Street, was the access to the orphaned section west of the interstate.

The state had already made plans to make the complete I-465 loop, including between 56th Street north to the north leg. However, it never did get federal approval. If it was going to be built, the state would have to build it not as the interstate, but as a state road. Hence it was decided that the road that I-465 was replacing, SR 100, would be the designation for that section.

1962 *MapIndy aerial photo of the area around the I-65/I-465 interchange on the northwest side of Marion County.*

The topo map of 1967 (1969 edition) shows the completion of Eagle Creek Reservoir and Park. It shows the area that had been the Dandy Trail Bridge over Eagle Creek. I have included two snippets of that map. The first is the I-465/I-65 interchange, with the proposed SR 100 connection. The Second shows the 56th Street causeway over the reservoir.

1969 USGS Topographic Map of the I-65/I-465/Proposed SR 100 interchange.

1969 USGS Topographic Map of the 56th Street Causeway over Eagle Creek Reservoir.

By the time that the 1972 photo was taken, the Eagle Creek Reservoir and Park was in place. Reed Road, which allowed access to the park area with the circular road, was still in place, but as I recall it had been closed to traffic on the 56th Street end. The Dandy Trail bridge had been replaced with the 56th Street Causeway, mainly because the old road was under water at that point.

The major change, relating to the subject at hand, was the completion and connection of the section of I-465 north of I-65 heading off towards the north leg of the bypass route. That section was built not as part of I-465, but as SR 100. It wouldn’t stay SR 100 long, as the Feds allowed it to become I-465…as long as the state continued to pay 50% of the building cost as opposed to the normal 10%. So, yes, that section of I-465 was a state choice…the Feds approved it after construction was started. This would cut even more of 62nd Street, and High School Road, out of the city landscape. The curve, connecting Lafayette Road to 62nd Street heading east, had already cut the corner of 62nd Street and High School Road off from connecting with anything other than Lafayette Road to the west.

1972 *MapIndy aerial photo of the area around the I-65/I-465 interchange on the northwest side of Marion County.*

It hasn’t change much in that area since 1972. There are some rumblings of changing the interchange to make it more friendly to interstate-to-interstate transfer. But nothing has come of it.

US 31 Through Franklin

One of the hardest things to do as a researcher in transportation history is to put logic and active thought aside to deal with government plans. When I did the Road Trip 1926 series, I followed the maps issued by the Indiana State Highway Commission as close as possible. However, sometimes maps are unavailable, or worse, unknown to exist by me, so I end up making logical conclusions. Most of the time, this works out great. Other times, not so much.

Such is the case with US 31 through Franklin. When I did the “Road Trip 1926: US 31,” I naturally assumed that the original State Road 1 turned national highway went through Franklin following the old Madison State Road. It was, after all, the route that was used to make the highway. And it did.

A little research, and a knowledge of how the state works, and what I thought I knew needs a little tweaking. The Madison State Road came from Indianapolis and into Franklin along Main Street. It left Franklin to the south along State Street. A logical conclusion would be that State Street would be the old state road to Monroe Street, where it travelled Monroe to the courthouse. Here it got a little convoluted, since connecting Jefferson and Monroe Streets gets a little interesting.

But then I found a USGS topo map of Franklin from 1948. And the route of the old US 31 through the town became perfectly clear.

1948 USGS Topographic map of the US 31 bypass of Franklin, Indiana.

US 31 was such an important route that it was made a hard surface road very quickly. It was one of the first roads in Indiana to be made completely hard surface through the entire state. Because it was given such a treatment, it is easy to follow through Franklin, if you know where to look.

1948 USGS Topographic Map of the route of old US 31 through Franklin.

Armed with new information, I can now say, with more certainty, that the route of US 31 through the Johnson County seat came in from the north along Main Street. At Jefferson Street, it turned west to turn south on what is now West Court Street. (That street is now one way north.) West Court Street is only one block long, connecting Jefferson and Monroe Streets.

Here the old road returns to Main Street by going east on Monroe Street. Turning south on Main Street, the original US 31 travels until it reaches South Street. From here, it follows South Street east to the end of the road, which is State Street. South of this point was the original Madison State Road, and the route of US 31. To this day, it is still called Old US 31.

Then again, looking at the last snippet, I could still be wrong. A quick glance will show that there are three hard surface roads in Franklin. One is Jefferson Street from the courthouse west. That was SR 44 through Franklin. (SR 44 was decommissioned between SR 144 west of Franklin to I-65 east of the city.)

One is the route of US 31 as described above. The last one is Walnut Street from Main Street to Jefferson Street. It is entirely possible that this might have been part of US 31. I would doubt that to be the case. But it IS the point of this article to prove that I can be wrong occasionally when it comes to following roads through towns. Until access to more maps becomes available, or until things get back to semi-normal in the world, we will have to make do with what we can find online.

And keep searching, I will.

US 52 And the End Of SR 100

I have discussed numerous times that history of one of the most well known state roads in Indiana…State Road 100. If you would like to see the first post I did on the subject, check out “SR 100: How Did It Come To Be,” a blog entry that appeared on ITH on 9 March 2019.

But when exactly did Shadeland Avenue, the road still called Road 100 by mostly older locals, end being SR 100? And why did it just go away?

The answer stems from a very small inaccuracy that I made when it came to the state roads coming into Indianapolis. Indiana has a law on the books that only allows INDOT to carry an inventory of 12,000 miles of roads. When I say roads, basically anything that carries a state issued number is part of the system. When it comes to interstates, the ramps connecting the interstate to another street or road are also counted. I have mentioned it before…it leads to some very out of the way posted detours.

The inaccuracy came from when I mentioned US 52 on the southeast side of Marion County. US 52 was the first road that was removed from Indianapolis, and placed on the new Interstate 465 bypass. It was the first road that didn’t get into Indianapolis past I-465. But this isn’t entirely accurate. On the southeast side, the designation US 52 DID travel within the loop…but barely. When the bypass of US 52 was created, there was no direct connection between US 52 (Brookville Road) and I-465. Or, more to the point, there was only half a connection. For the US 52 bypass to work, Brookville Road continued to be US 52 until it reached SR 100, Shadeland Avenue, one half mile later.

1995 MapIndy aerial photo of US 52 and its connections to SR 100
and Interstate 465 on the east side of Marion County

This made the US 52 bypass use part of SR 100 in its route. As I-465 was completed, and legally replaced SR 100, the SR 100 designation started to be rolled back. In the early 1970’s, most of the route was given back to Indianapolis (which by that time covered the entire county). All of the signs marking SR 100 were removed. But the state still held on to the small section on the east side connecting I-465 to US 40 (Washington Street at the Cloverleaf). This remained legally SR 100, even though it was no longer marked as such.

Personal note here. As much as I have lived on the east side of Marion County in my life, I have never, other than on a map, actually ever seen a SR 100 sign. The closest I have come are the little blue reference markers that aren’t mileposts, but are numbered one mile apart most of the time. I have seen several times little blue signs with white lettering that read “SR 100.”

After a while, INDOT even stopped marking the Official Highway Maps with the designation SR 100. It still belonged to the state, but it was a shadow state road. Unless you knew it was SR 100, there was nothing telling you that it ever was.

Due to the way that I-465 was built, the US 52 bypass would travel around the south side of Marion County, until it reached the original I-465 connection to I-65 on the northwest side.

*2001 MapIndy aerial photo of US 52 and its connections to I-465*
*and Shadeland Avenue on the east side of Marion County*

On 1 July 1999, INDOT officially rerouted both US 31 and US 40 along the I-465 loop, decommissioning those two roads inside the bypass. Both would use the south and east legs of the loop. Because US 40 no longer existed between the two interchanges with I-465, SR 100 was officially decommissioned in its entirety from I-465 to US 40, removing the number 100 from the state inventory. The section from Brookville Road south to the interstate was still part of the state road system, as there still was no complete connection between US 52 and I-465.

By 2001, a connection from I-465 north to US 52 was completed, and the ramps connecting Brookville Road to Shadeland Avenue southbound were removed. This also led to a rather large reconstruction of both Shadeland Avenue and I-465 at this point, with the wide sweeping curves that had been present before completely removed. By the end of 2001, the ramp connecting Brookville Road to I-465 was completed, officially removing any section of all state roads inside the I-465 loop. It was also at this time that the official US 52 was routed north on I-465. Thus it traveled across the north side of the county, and along what became I-865 to Whitestown.

The official end of SR 100 was on 1 July 1999. But it was kept alive by the state for 20+ years, at least in part, due to the original plan of connecting US 52 to the bypass.

I-465 and I-70, Marion County East Side, A Pictorial History

Today, I want to take a look at the interchange between Interstates 70 and 465 on the east side of Marion County…in pictorial form. This history will cover from 1962 to 1993, with what aerial photographs are available from MapIndy, the official mapping application of Indianapolis/Marion County. It will also cover the interchange between Interstate 70 and Shadeland Avenue, which was SR 100 before, and for some time after, the building of its replacement, I-465.

Two of the constrictions at the location of this interchange were both 21st Street and Franklin Road. Franklin Road had been in place since it was created as the Noblesville-Franklin State Road early in the state’s history. As you can tell from the photos, the routing of Franklin Road was changed between 21st Street and around 25th Street. The original routing of the road is still in place, but contains two dead end sections at the interstate.

21st Street has been around for a whole lot of years, as well. Maps show that it was added to the county sometime between 1870 and 1889. In 1889, there was a toll house for the Pleasant Run Pike on the northwest corner of 21st Street and Shadeland Avenue. From what I can tell, the only part of the road that was a toll road was from Arlington Avenue to Mitthoeffer Road. Today, 21st Street can be followed from Massachusetts Avenue at the Bee Line (Big Four – Conrail – CSX) Railroad to a point just northwest of Charlottesville.

The ramp from I-70 West to I-465 South was under construction in 1978, and would be completed in 1979. Prior to this, that traffic movement was handled by a loop ramp, as the interchange was originally built as a 3/4 cloverleaf. By 1993, the current collector/distributor system connecting Shadeland Avenue to both I-70 and I-465 was completed.

The ramps to Shadeland Avenue have always been a very tight fit into the area allowed.

Winona Interurban

In the Interurban age in Indiana, there were light rail, or electric traction, trains going almost every direction one could think of. Today, I want to focus on what was called the Winona Interurban…a traction company that ran from Goshen to Peru. It’s history was brief…maybe a little over two decades. But it did serve a function. And it was well remembered years after its demise…and even had trains running on it into the 1960s.

Construction began on the proposed Warsaw & Goshen Interurban Company in 1904. The first meeting of the Board of Directors of the company was held at Winona Lake on 16 August 1904. Officers elected at that time include H. J. Heinz of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as President, and a director from South Bend named J. M. Studebaker. The Warsaw & Goshen was to build between the two title cities, connecting, at Warsaw, to the Winona & Warsaw Interurban, allowing passengers to travel from Goshen to Winona Lake. The Indianapolis News of 26 August 1904 reported that “necessary surveys have already been completed, and work will commence within a few days. It is the expectation to have the road in running order by spring.”

One of the major concerns for the road is that the Winona Interurban was essentially owned by the Winona Assembly, the Presbyterian organization that also had extensive holdings at Winona Lake. That is how H. J. Heinz and John M. Studebaker were involved with the interurban project. Both of them, at different points in history, directed the Winona Assembly. This would lead to problems with the operation of the railroad in years to come.

The entire line went into operation in 1906.

As is typical of Indiana railroad history, the Winona Interurban found itself in financial trouble…and receivership. The Indianapolis News of 9 June 1908 reported that “a bill of complaint has been filed in the Federal Court by the Electrical Installation Company, with headquarters in Chicago, against the Winona Interurban Railway Company, the Winona Assembly and Summer Schools Association and the Winona & Warsaw Railway Company, in which it is asked, among other things, that the Winona Interurban Railway Company be ordered to operate its road every day in the week instead of only six, and that a receiver should be appointed.”

The suit was brought because the Electric Installation Company, as a contractor on the road, was given bonds in the route to the tune of $425,000. The EIC claims that the traction company made numerous statements that the route would be open on Sundays, but that it was never written in contracts “on the ground that such a clause might be objectionable to many of the stockholders and constituents of the Winona Assembly and Summer Schools Association.” This, the EIC felt, was too much of an earnings loss to bear. Due to the loss of what was believed to be 20% more income, the company was unable to pay any interest on the bonds over and above operating and maintenance costs since it opened in 1906. “Part of certain subsidies granted in Elkhart and Kosciusko counties has been used in the payment of interest.” The EIC also feels that the railroad will be unable to meet the interest payment due on 1 July 1908.

Due to the conflict of interest between the Winona Assembly and the Winona Interurban Railway Company, the EIC asked for a receiver to be put in place to allow for payment of approximately $30,000 in debt, payment of interest, and to allow the courts to remove the legally questionable ownership of the interurban line from the Winona Assembly.

Sunday service along the line was finally started in February 1909, the same time that it was announced that the railway was constructing a continuation of the line from Winona Lake to Peru, some 44 miles distant. The section from Winona Lake to Goshen was listed at 25 miles. An official of the Winona Interurban Railway Company, and Secretary and General Manager of the Winona Assembly Association, Dr. Sol C. Dickey, resigned his post with the railway due to the objection of running railroads on Sunday…something the Assembly had been against since the beginning.

The franchise creating the legal right to run the railway included Sunday service…although it was never enforced. The Indianapolis News of 19 February 1909 stated that it was never enforced due to “attention being called to the fact that it was impossible under the laws of Indiana to force any man to work on Sunday.”

The service on the Warsaw to Peru line, according to the same News article, would be opened to Mentone within a few days. That would cover 13 of the 44 miles between Warsaw and Peru.

The Winona Interurban Railway Company would find itself in a financial pickle when it was announced in December 1915 that the original bonds, called “Twenty year Five Per Cent First Mortgage Gold Bonds,” dated 1 July 1905, had fallen into default due to lack of interest payment on 1 October 1915, and the pending non-payment of interest on 1 January 1916.

By July 1916, the First Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago, having been the deposit organization for the bonds listed above, asked for a receiver to be appointed for the Winona Interurban Railway Company. The bank was the trustee for $750,000 worth of the above bonds issued for the Goshen Division of the line. The traction company, it is reported, defaulted on the payment of $37,500 of interest. Although the bonds were for the Goshen division (completed in 1905), a receiver is asked for the entire company, including the Peru division (completed in 1910). However, the Peru division was under the trusteeship of the Union Trust Company of Indianapolis.

Peru division bonds were $1.5 million of the allowed $3 to be issued. The Indianapolis Star of 23 July 1916 reports that John H. Holliday, founder of both the Indianapolis News and the Union Trust Company, had $50,000 personally invested in the traction company. “H. J. Heinz of Pittsburgh, the pickle king, has about $1,000,000 invested in the Winona Interurban. J. M. Studebaker of South Bend is another creditor, having over $100,000 invested.” (As an aside, 1916 is also the year Holliday gave his White River estate to the city of Indianapolis to create a 80 acre park.)

The Lafayette Journal & Courier of 15 December 1922 reported that the Winona Interurban Railway Company had filed notice, under a new Indiana state law, of its intention to surrender local franchises and permits. The company would then operate under an indeterminate permit under the jurisdiction of the Indiana Public Service Commission. These franchises and permits that were being surrendered included those in Goshen, Warsaw, Peru, Milford Junction, Leesburg and Mentone, as well as county franchises in Elkhart, Kosciusko, Fulton and Miami Counties.

It was reported in the Indianapolis Star of 25 May 1923 that the Winona Interurban Railway Company was, in fact, in possession of assets of about $3,000,000 with the road and equipment valued at about $2,300,000. The Winona & Warsaw Railroad, technically leased by the Winona, earned $8,000 a year in lease income. That lease, for 3.13 miles of trackage from Warsaw to the Winona Assembly, was for 99 years. Total earnings for the company came to $300,000 per year, at least according to the Star.

Reports in March 1924 were being floated that the Winona would be leased and controlled by the Interstate Public Service Company, the same outfit that owned the Greenwood line stretching from Indianapolis to Seymour and Louisville. The Winona line was inspected by people involved with the Interstate Public Service Company in mid-June 1924. The Winona was bid upon at a receivers sale in 1924. It had been in the hands of a receiver, former State Senator C. J. Munton of Kendallville, since 1916. The IPSC was controlled by Samuel Insull, a collector of interurban properties. In Indiana, he had come into possession of the interurban lines out of Indianapolis and Terre Haute, among other places, and consolidated them later into the Indiana Railroad Company.

Unlike most interurban lines in Indiana, the Winona would survive the end of the interurban era…barely. It had changed its name to the Winona Railroad Company in 1926, focusing more on freight than passengers. After a while, the company would drop passenger traffic from the rails, moving them to busses, in the mid to late 1930’s. Freight continued to be run along the line for many years.

The end of the company would occur on 15 June 1952. Abandonment was in order for several years prior to this point, but the Indiana Public Service Commission would not allow it until arrangements were made with the “steam’ railroads to take over freight service for the segment connecting Winona Lake to New Paris and the street running in Center Street in east Warsaw. Such arrangements were made with the Pennsylvania Railroad in early May 1952. Other sections had already been abandoned prior to this point. And thus, the Winona Railroad went away.

Indiana Vs. Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railroad

In 1899, the state of Indiana brought forth a lawsuit against the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad for tax money due for the school fund. It started with a charter. In the early days of Indiana, to create a railroad company (and basically any company, as far as that goes), a charter for the company and its goals would have to be written and taken before the Indiana General Assembly for approval. I would love to say that these things were basically rubber stamped…but I truly have no way of knowing without extensive research.

The Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad was issued it original charter by the Indiana General Assembly in 1831. The name on the charter was the Terre Haute & Indianapolis. The TH&I was then issued a special charter as the Terre Haute & Richmond Rail Road on 24 January 1847. The company was to build a railroad between the two title cities, through Indianapolis. The official name of the company had changed twice between the special charter of 1847 and the court case of 1899. First, in 1850, the space was taken out between rail and road, making it the Terre Haute & Richmond Railroad legally. Then, in 1865, the name was changed to suit the actual extent of the railroad company. It became the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad Company.

Newspapers of the time often refer to the legal action against the Terre Haute & Indianapolis as the Vandalia Case. By the time of the legal action, the TH&I was already leasing the St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute, the only line (for a while) connecting Indianapolis to St. Louis. The St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute was known most of the time as the Vandalia. The Vandalia was in financial trouble while under construction. Money was floated from five railroad companies to complete the route in 1870: Terre Haute & Indianapolis, Pennsylvania, Panhandle, Steubenville and the Indiana Central. The last three being consolidated later into the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway, also nicknamed the Panhandle. The Pennsylvania would gain control of the Panhandle and the Vandalia…although the Terre Haute & Indianapolis would fight it the entire way.

The whole case stemmed from how the charter for the TH&I was read, and who was doing the reading. The State of Indiana was of the opinion that the TH&I owed the School Fund somewhere between $1.2 and $2 million dollars. Obviously, the TH&I was of the opposite opinion. The entire case stemmed from a special charter that had been issued for the company in 1847, give or take a year. The new charter, keeping a provision from the old one, would allow the railroad to set its own passenger and freight rates, and allow for a 15% profit to be split among its shareholders after all of the construction bills have been paid.

The state, in its case, claimed that the TH&I was setting its rates to a point where it was earning 18% to 35% profits. Since the limit was 15%, the rest, the state continued, would be required to be paid to the state school fund. Vandalia saw things differently.

The South Bend Tribune of 4 October 1899 describes the beginning of the case as such: “Noble C. Butler, as master in chancery, began taking testimony, Monday afternoon (2 October 1899), in the case of the state against the Vandalia railroad for money due the school fund on account of the special charter under which the road operated 20 years ago.”

“Experts have been examining the company’s books to ascertain the exact earnings and the proportionate amount due the state, and their testimony is expected to be interesting. About $2,000,000 is claimed to be due the school fund from the railroad.” (Source: South Bend Tribune, 4 October 1899, pp 1 via newspapers.com.)

When the time came to defend itself, the Vandalia brought out John G. Williams, a man, according to the Indianapolis News of 17 January 1900, “who is said to know more about the affairs of the road than any other man.” Attorney Williams started talking about the charter of the Terre Haute & Richmond, the charters of other railroads, and the fact that when the original charters were written for the early railroads, the company had a choice between building a railroad and building a toll road. The state saw no real difference between the two.

He also mentioned that, according to the News, “one of the first roads built in the State was the Baltimore & Ohio. In the beginning, its cars were moved by horses and, when the wind was favorable, sails were hoisted on the cars to help propel them.” I would be that the News meant in the United States, as the Baltimore & Ohio wouldn’t have been in Indiana in 1831.

Reference is also made by the attorney for the railroad that in the beginning, the B&O charged 4 cents a ton a mile for moving of freight. “Modern railroads” (1900) are lucky to get one half cent per ton/mile. And passengers were actually weighed and charged essentially a pro-rated charge of 4 cents per ton/mile. If I am reading this right, since I weigh 200 pounds, it would cost me eight cents to travel by train from Indianapolis to Greenfield in those days. If I lived then…and the train actually was built to connect the two.

Mr. Williams went on to argue that the ability to regulate tolls by the state was left out of the charters of seven of the eight railroads that were incorporated in 1832. All eight of these charters allowed for the company to build a railroad or turnpike. Also in 1832, a company applied for a charter to build a bridge across the Ohio River at the Falls, the location of New Albany and/or Jeffersonville, and Louisville on the Kentucky side.

In 1832, five more railroads were incorporated, including the Evansville & Lafayette. It, like the Terre Haute & Indianapolis (1831 charter), had a clause stating that the State of Indiana could purchase the road after a certain period. Very few railroad company charters included the state regulation of the amount of dividends to its shareholders.

Ultimately, the Vandalia won the original case. Special Master Butler determined that the state was owed nothing by the Vandalia. The State appealed to the Superior Court, in which it was determined that the Vandalia owed the state of Indiana $913,000.

According to the Indianapolis Journal of 18 June 1902, as the case was being brought before the Indiana Supreme Court, “the charter provided that the company should pay the State its surplus earnings over the operating expenses and 10 per cent to the stockholders. The company surrendered its special charter in 1873 and has since operated under the general railroad law.” The company claimed that the surplus money was spent to improve the road, and there was no money left to pay the state.

The case before the Indiana Supreme Court lasted three days, ending on 19 June 1902. When the ruling went against the Vandalia, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that they would appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court. That decision was made on 28 November 1902.

The Indiana Supreme Court judgement ruled that the Vandalia must pay $913,905, and a six percent interest from the date of the Superior Court judgement. This brought to total to $1,028,143. Of course, the state was to only receive $771,107 of that, with the rest going to attorney’s fees. The Vandalia would fall into receivership after the ruling, and arguments between Illinois and Indiana receivers would follow.

31 May 1904, and the United States Supreme Court ruled, after much deliberation, that the Vandalia Railroad owed a grand total of nothing to the state of Indiana School Fund. This would go on to allow the Vandalia to consolidate the following railroads into one corporate entity: Terre Haute & Indianapolis, Indianapolis & Vincennes, Logansport & Toledo, Terre Haute & Logansport, and the St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute. A consolidation which created the Vandalia Railroad Company on 1 January 1905.

1959 – Interstate Contract Bids

When the interstate system started being built in Indiana in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, contracts for building those roads started flying fast and furious. The interstate system came into being in 1956…and the first contracts were finally let in 1959. The Indianapolis News of 29 May 1959 reported all of the contracts that were let to that point.

First four miles of Interstate 465: “Low bid for construction of the first 4 miles of Interstate 465, the new belt highway to encircle Indianapolis, has been submitted by an Evanston (Ill.) firm. The construction contract also will include the building of 1 1/3 miles of Interstate 65 – the Indianapolis-to-Chicago expressway – northwest of Indianapolis.”

One of the things that keeps coming up when it comes to the interstates, their designations and their contracts is the actual name for I-465. Legally, that’s what it was, Interstate 465. However, for many years, until the interstate was done, or even beyond, the news media would not only refer to it as Interstate 465, but as the New State Road 100. A lot of people at the time simply saw it as a replacement for SR 100, which it was. This was also brought on by the fact that the original contracts from the state had project numbers for both roads.

This contract covered I-465 from a point north of US 136 to West 62nd Street. It would run west of High School Road through the area. The section of Interstate 65 included in this contract would run “parallel with and west of U.S. 52, from just northwest of West 65th to just southeast of High School Road.” The bid for this contract was $2,257,679.81.

The same company won the $1,705,758.49 bid to construct Interstate 74 from SR 267 in Brownsburg to just east of the Hendricks-Marion County Line. This 4.5 mile section of what the News referred to as the “Indianapolis to central Illinois expressway” would be built north of US 136.

As is typical of the way Indiana bids contracts for road projects, bridges and roads are bid separately. The above contracts did not allow for bridges…just the approaches. Bridges would be bid usually earlier than the road.

The first new Ohio River bridge linking Indiana and Kentucky in 30 years was let on a bid of $994,979.58 to Roy Ryan & Sons of Evansville. “The bridge will be double-decked, with three lanes of one way traffic on one level and three lanes of one way traffic on the other level.”

Three bridges were let on the Interstate 74 project mentioned above. Ruckman & Hansen, Inc., of Fort Wayne, won two of them. $187,129 for the bridge over Big White Lick Creek west of SR 267, and $219,553 for the bridge over SR 267. Carl M. Geupel Construction Company bid $218,712 to build a county road bridge over Interstate 74, 1.2 miles southeast of SR 267.

These were among the first contracts to be let on the new Interstate highway system in Indiana. Many more would come.

1917-1918: Indiana, Railroads and War

6 April 1917. The United States has entered World War I. And train traffic is about to become very heavy moving troops and material to the east coast to be shipped overseas. Indiana, being literally right in the middle of everything, would see the increase of that traffic first hand. And the decrease in traffic at the same time.

At the time, Indiana had six major routes crossing the state west to east: Baltimore & Ohio; Erie; New York Central/Big Four (including the Nickle Plate at that time); Pennsylvania; Southern; and Wabash. There were other railroads that were servicing the Hoosier state at the time to add into this massive amount of steel rail. Indiana had been very dependent on the railroads, to get people and freight in and out.

With the coming of World War I, and other things that happened around the same time, the lives of normal Hoosiers was about to be greatly affected. Even more so, to an extent, than the railroad people who had to do their best to supply them.

It all started with the war traffic itself. At first, there were few disruptions to the “normal.” Yes, traffic started to increase. Passenger trains were starting to be curtailed within a month of the entry of the United States into the war. The Baltimore & Ohio would be one road that was hit hard by the increasing traffic. That railroad announced in newspapers in mid May 1917 that passenger trains would be cut off to transport troops for the war effort. But, they said, it would be done to cause as little disruption to the civilian population as possible.

Another effect of the war on the railroads was simply the car shortage. This confuses people, since the idea is to take a railcar to its destination, empty it, and send it back for more loads. During World War I, this is not what happened…directly. Yes, the cars were loaded and sent east to the ports. And then they sat there, unable to be unloaded for up to months at a time. The cars would go east…and not come west for a long time, leading to a shortage of cars still trying to transport things east to go to the war.

Amidst the car shortages, coal strikes led to a shortage of coal loads to ship to the war effort. Or to the civilian population that used it to heat their houses. Many businesses would be closed several more days a week due to a shortage of heat producing coal. Towns throughout Indiana declared a day of the week as “heatless,” recommending that the public forego the use of coal on that day to extend the supply.

With the shortage of coal, and the shortage of cars to transport it, the Winter of 1917-1918 was going to be a long one. Then, it got worse. A blizzard tore across the northern part of the state in January 1918. The Indianapolis News of 28 January 1918 reports that Rochester, a city served by the Erie and the Nickle Plate roads at the time, had no traffic coming in and out of the town on that particular Monday. No new newspapers, visitors, or goods were able to get to Rochester. On top of “the observance of heatless Monday, made Rochester a dull place.” Such reports were coming in from all over the northern part of Indiana.

And with all of this going on, it was decided that the Federal Government would take over the railroads for the duration of the war in an effort to improve efficiency. This, as usual, had the opposite effect. Some of the backlog of cars would be broken up. But as Indiana’s freight started to back up for lack of transportation, the value of other forms of transport, other than the railroads, began to really come into view.

A lot of the reason for the a) downfall of the railroad and b) the major road system in Indiana can be solely laid at the feet of World War I. Not all of it, mind you. There were other factors at play. But it was World War I, and the constipation of the railroad system, that helped push Indiana into creating a State Highway Commission. While the ISHC was formed before the United States joined the war, the importance of such an organization came screaming out due to the war.

A Little Thinner

Today, I won’t be doing a blog entry about Indiana Transportation History. As ITH gets close to 500 entries, I want to explain why, if you haven’t noticed, entries are getting a little thinner around here.

First, as all of you are aware, it has been a very strange year. Most people were and/or still are locked away in their homes. This is not the case for me. I have been working this entire time. Early on, this was easy. As the “beer bug” continues, things on my end are getting back to normal. And when I say back to normal, I mean in the shortest time possible. I work in a big box retailer as a freight supervisor. The fact that stores have been out of things so much lately is now catching up as the supply system has been reset. What would normally be a three truck week this time of the year is a seven truck week.

Second. The majority of entries here comes from me having an idea, and investigating it. Nothing is ever set in stone around here. Usually, the idea leads in another direction as I find something that attracts my interest more, or most usually, something that has more information available. For instance, I STILL can’t find anything on the naming and termini of the Illinois Road out of Fort Wayne.

With the increase in work…and hours…mentioned above, ideas aren’t coming as quickly as they used to. I have been known to sit at my desk for a couple of hours before coming up with something to write about. That’s one of the reasons I keep asking what it is you, my readers, would like to see. Writing, normally, isn’t a problem. Starting is the problem.

Third. I have migrated to YouTube. A little…very little…of my time has been spent on my YouTube endeavors. Most of those include old time radio. And a new series rebroadcasting the news of World War II 81 years later. The real test is an eight hour show I do on Monday mornings (starting at 0100 EDT). And because of my love of history, I was asked to start a new channel…a history show with a guy from Winnipeg, Manitoba. None of this takes much of my time, but I can consider it a reason why things have been getting thin around here.

There are other things involved in all of this that I can’t discuss. Suffice it to say that I feel like I need to figure this out. I started this blog because of my love for both transportation and history. It’s not going anywhere. I was warned at the very beginning that I may hit a wall of subject matter. I thought that Indiana is 200 years old, and transportation has been around here longer than that…I’ll be fine.

Not quite. But I do feel that I owe my audience, you wonderful people that make this both possible and worth it, the truth about what is going on…and why things look a little thin around here. I will keep plugging away at this. This is my baby…I will not allow it to flounder.

The work situation will be getting better. The warehouses can’t be backlogged forever. Besides, I am moving to a different location…with roughly the same job…at the end of September 2020. That location is half the distance from my house. That will help quite a bit, as well.

My YouTube stuff, again, doesn’t take much time…and it helps clear my mind to see if another idea can take hold. I can’t tell you how many blog entries I have written while a video is running through its encode process over the past three months. Or when I am doing a live stream on someone else’s channel. Which I do quite a bit.

It may sound like I am running myself in a lot of directions. Yes…and no. I have to be always moving…always doing something. Usually, this creates a situation where ideas for many things come out.

I just wanted to take time to explain why things were kind of strange around here. It wasn’t until 0100 Friday morning that I realized I hadn’t written a blog for that day. Oops. So, please bare with me for the next several weeks. I promise it will get back to normal. Thank you for taking the time to spend with my ramblings over the past 18 months.

If you are interested, here is my YouTube channel… https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtebwl4U4S5knOvmDOwNTgw. Keep in mind that the live streams, known as Short Attention Span Theatre, are entities of their own. And questionable content they are, I must say.

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