Read time: 5 min.

I decided I couldn’t take the same old boring highway again as I drove home from another recent doctor’s appointment in Anderson. I absconded from the main route, pointed my car toward the countryside, and eventually turned onto Lee Pit Road. Just south, a lonely clay tile silo rose from a field like a forgotten monument. 

I’ve written about some of what Lee Pit Road has to offer before. It’s an interesting drive! If you’re heading west out of Muncie, Lee Pit is the first right just after I-69. Not only will you cruise past the rear of Big Jack -the towering Muffler Man guarding McAllister Rentals- but you’ll also find a flowing well half a mile north. The lonesome clay tile silo stands a little further up.

A road hugging the east banks of Killbuck Creek in Delaware County’s rural Harrison Township has existed for a long time, at least since 1874¹. In those days, it angled northwest to pass Oliver P. Jones’ property before it reached land owned by William H. Lee².

The road took most of its present shape by 1887, when it cut jaggedly through the terrain³. Still, it wasn’t officially known as “Lee Pit” until 1991⁴, when it was assigned the new moniker as part of a Delaware County project to update rural route addresses and eliminate duplicate names⁵. 

Lee Pit is an unusual name for a road, but it stems from William and Sarah Lee, whose holdings had grown to more than 220 acres by 1887⁶. Ancient deposits left by glacial activity made their land ripe for a gravel pit, so they dug one⁷. If I’m reading things right, the old Lee Pit sits just south of what I gather to be the old Courtson quarry⁸. It’s about eighty feet from I-69.

The silo I passed is seven hundred feet south of Lee Pit, but only sixty feet back from Lee Pit Road. The assessor says it dates to 1900⁹, but I don’t believe it. Instead of concrete or wood, the structure was built using clay tiles, a method that had already fallen out of favor by the early 20th century. 

Clay tiles for silos were made in a limited range of curved, hollow shapes that dictated their size. Unfortunately, that made designing efficient grain bins a challenge. That wasn’t the only drawback, though: tile silos were said to be notoriously difficult to seal, structurally unstable, and highly susceptible to fire damage. Ultimately, those factors made tiles a short-lived experiment in agricultural construction¹⁰.

Still, the old silo at Lee Pit has managed to stand for more than a hundred years. Despite their flaws, clay tile silos -especially those made using the salt-glazed method where salt added to the kiln reacted with silica in the clay to form a shiny, water-resistant seal¹¹– have proven surprisingly resilient. I know of others in Cammack, on Jackson Street in Muncie, and one on River Road west of Yorktown.

If I had to guess, I’d bet that the Hoosier Building Tile & Silo Company of nearby Albany was responsible for building the silo at the Lee Pit Farm. Unfortunately, the barn it serviced is no longer there. Those more intimate with the area will remember it better than I can, but aerial images appear to show that the old barn stood until 2010. It was gone by 2013, when Google last drove its Street View cars through the area. 

Like so many rural landmarks, the old silo on Lee Pit Road is a reminder of what once was- a stubborn survivor of a bygone era that still holds its ground. Maybe the silo keep standing for another hundred years. For now, though, it marks a corner of Delaware County’s past between a gravel pit, an old INDOT right-of-way marker, and an old flowing well, waiting for curious travelers to slow down and take notice.

Sources Cited
1 Kingman, A.L. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana : from recent & original surveys, made expressly for this map, drawn, compiled and published by A.L. Kingman and assistants. map, Chicago, IL; A.L. Kingman.
2 (See footnote 1). 
3 Griffing, B. N. (1887). Mt. Pleasant Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana . map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.
4 Legal Notices (1991, May 18). The Muncie Star. p. 19. 
5 Slabaugh, S. (1990, June 20). Road Name Game. The Muncie Star. p. 5. 
6 (See footnote 3). 
7 Spurgeon, B. (1995, September 5). Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 6. 
8 (See footnote 7). 
9 Parcel 0536200014000 (2025). Delaware County Assessor’s Office [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved May 21, 2025.
10 BUILDING OF THE DAY #PresMonth (2014, May 24). Indiana DNR DIvision of HIstoric Preservation & Archaeology. Facebook. Retriebed February 9, 2025. 
11 Glazed Tile Silo (2013, February 24). My Quality Day. Web. Retrieved February 9, 2025.