Some buildings don’t really disappear. Instead, they just learn how to hold new secrets. Pendleton’s elementary school campus is one of those places. At a glance, it’s a tidy, familiar part of town, reshaped over decades to meet modern needs. If you look a little closer, though, the outline of something older begins to emerge: the roof of the old Pendleton High School gym.

Back when I was in school at IPFW, I took every which way from my parents’ house in Muncie to my crappy apartment in Fort Wayne. I often passed through Petroleum on State Road 1. Once day, I wondered where the east-west crossroads went and passed a boulder marking the site of the old Petroleum school. I was in the area not long ago and went by a second time.