Read time: 4 min.

My favorite blogs usually provide a year-end retrospective of stats, insights, popular posts, and favorites. The numbers are in and the votes have been tallied for 2023, so let’s take a look.

I started this blog in September 2022. Over four months, 6,085 visitors viewed it 10,240 times. As you might expect, a full year of posting brought in a lot more views. In 2023, 72,854 visitors viewed the blog more than 111,000 times. Comments, likes, subscriptions, and coffees are all up too in ways that outpaced my expectations. I’m glad that so many people have found my research compelling. Thank you for reading!

I started this blog to consolidate content from three niche websites and a Facebook group I ran. Since then, I’ve branched out into other interests and some have proven to be my most-viewed posts. Here are 2023’s most widely-read posts:

• 5: Downtown Muncie, done in LEGO – How and why I designed an eleven-foot-long Muncie skyline out of LEGO bricks 
• 4: Cornbread Road: Everything you ever wanted to know about Delaware County’s strangely-named thoroughfare – I love places with strange names. Around these parts, Cornbread Road takes the cake. 
• 3: Knox Township’s Oak Grove schoolhouse in Jay County – The ruins of an abandoned schoolhouse north of Redkey, Indiana, have fascinated me for years.
• 2: Five springs at Richmond’s Glen Miller Park – I tracked down five flowing wells, known in Richmond as springs, in a historic city park. 
• 1: Forgotten Photos of Fort Wayne’s Elmhurst High School – I found some old photos I took before a high school was demolished and wrote some of its story.

Traffic to my five most-visited posts represented about 11% of the total views to this blog in 2023. Views of my five personal favorites represented about 2%, but I’m glad I wrote them.

• 5: A Village Pantry visual primer – I charted a convenience store’s changing aesthetic. Later, one of the company’s architects reached out to me in appreciation.
• 4: Shoot your shot: A final lesson from Markleville High School – I was glad I took photos of a historic building once I learned it had been demolished.
• 3: Meijer’s whimsical pineapple of discovery – People from the corporate office sent a message thanking me for my post!
• 2: Two hidden artesian wells near Perkinsville in Madison County – I’d never have learned about two flowing wells if Fred Schrope hadn’t taken me on an adventure.
• 1: Fort Wayne’s Maplecrest Burger King: a childhood mystery solved – I filled in a core childhood memory and reminisced about my grandparents. 

I was glad to see a significant increase in comments this year that outpaced the growth in views. I love interacting with you! Here are my top five most commented-upon posts of 2022: 

• 5: Bethel Pike: Eight miles of the old Hub Highway from Muncie to Bethel – I followed part of an old national auto trail in Delaware County. 
• 4: Green Acres in Blackford County – I examined the site of an old county infirmary southwest of Hartford City.
• 3: A brief history of Burger Man – I traced the history of a pioneering local fast food chain. 
• 2: Five springs at Richmond’s Glen Miller Park
• 1: Forgotten Photos of Fort Wayne’s Elmhurst High School

WordPress says I published 320,000 words here in 2023. That includes the sources I do my best to cite, but 877 words per day is still a lot. I put about thirty hours a week into research and writing here, but one-offs that turned into series like Abandoned Marsh, Railcar Spotting, and the new AT&T Long Lines project help buoy my deep dives.

I’m glad for my reach to increase, and I’m grateful when thousands appreciate a post about an old high school. At the same time, I’m also happy when one person finds something I wrote about an obscure tobacco pipe. Those connections, big and small, make all my effort worth it! I’m glad that you, along with 72,000 others, found something compelling here this past year. Thanks again all for reading, liking, and commenting. Now on to 2024!