Read time: 5 min.

I was idly poking around Google Maps during a pocket of free time when something caught my eye: just south of Pendleton, a road met a creek. There’s nothing unusual about that, but I noticed something odd: satellite imagery didn’t show a bridge! I double-checked the aerials of the county assessor’s database, and there still wasn’t a proper crossing. Could I have stumbled across a ford? In 2025? I had to see the crossing for myself. A couple of weekends ago, I went on a ford expedition in my Hyundai Elantra.

Unless you drive one, you probably don’t think much about fords. That’s the old-school kind, I mean- the shallow spots in a river where you can cross on foot, horseback, or with a sturdy vehicle. Fords are practical, low-cost alternatives to bridges, but they’ve largely gone the way of the dodo thanks to one big drawback: high water turns them into no-go zones. 

I drive past a relic of a ford every morning on my when I pass Priest Ford Road along State Road 32. When I head to Prairie Creek Reservoir, I pass another- Whitney’s Ford. Priest’s was replaced by a pair of bridges long ago and Whitney’s was bypassed entirely, so that’s why stumbling across an intact example over Lick Creek in Madison County felt like finding something half-forgotten and rare.

Before heading out to check out the old Lick Creek ford, I did a little homework. I pulled up some old maps, hoping to see if the spot was ever marked as something more than just an ordinary crossing. I was looking for a name, a note, a dotted line, or some sign it was different. Unfortunately, nope: neither Thomas Helm’s 1880 map nor the 1921 edition from -ironically- the Ford Map Company of Indianapolis showed anything out of the ordinary where Lick Creek crossed what’s now County Road 950-South. It was just another county lane, at least on paper.

I wasn’t satisfied with what I found, so I headed south. My trip to the Lick Creek ford started off simple enough- Anderson to Pendleton, then east on State Road 38, past the Fall Creek Meeting House and the old Spring Valley School. That’s where I took a right and let the county roads do their thing- twisting, narrowing, and shedding traffic with every curve. Eventually, I hit one of those flip-down metal signs that read ROAD CLOSED. I probably should’ve taken the hint since my track record with obeying signs like that isn’t great. Instead, I kept going.

The road came to a firm stop maybe half a mile later where a steel gate stretched across the pavement that barred any vehicles from going further. I pulled off to the side, stepped out, and walked past the barrier. Just beyond it, Lick Creek was doing exactly what it wasn’t supposed to: rushing across the road! It wasn’t a gentle trickle- it was a full-on, fast-moving current about six inches deep! The water surged over the old pavement with an urgency that made it clear why a gate was there. 

As I expected, there was no bridge over Lick Creek; there was also no culvert. All that stood there was water, asphalt, and a line drawn by nature. Of course, I did the stupid thing by stepping out into the ford, just for a moment, to test the flow. The water surged around my ankles with surprising force, and it hit me- if I wasn’t careful, the creek might decide to take me with it! I backed off, snapped some photos, shot a quick video, and tried to soak in the moment. Normally, the sound of flowing water calms me.This wasn’t a babbling brook or a flowing well, however. Instead, it was more of a warning than a welcome.

After I got home, I plugged “Lick Creek Ford Madison County” into Google to see if anything came up. To my surprise, something did- a link to a PDF published by the Madison County Historian and the local paper that described the place I’d seen as the last remaining ford in Madison County. That was it. There was no history, no stories, and no old photos, just that single, tantalizing line. The rest of the ford’s history was left to mystery, and my imagination filled the gaps.

I guess I don’t need to know anything more about Madison County’s Lick Creek ford after seeing it on old maps and in person. Lick Creek’s ford might not show up on most maps, but I felt the weight of something enduring as the water crossed the road. The ford was a threshold between past and present and caution and curiosity. For a brief moment, I got to stand near the middle of it!