Read time: 3 min.

I work for a company that makes plastic pellets that get melted down and molded into car parts, dishwashers, washing machines, and who knows what else. Honestly, our operation isn’t all that different from a modern farm. We’ve got hoppers, augers, bins, and silos just like they do! I won’t pretend I know the ins and outs of how it all works, but I do know this: back in 2021, I stumbled across a silo that stopped me in my tracks. It was hanging in the air like a giant birdcage.

At my factory, we’ve got massive silos within our walls that work in conjunction with even bigger ones towering outside the plant. New material gets mixed inside before we send it out to store before shipment. The hundred-foot silos outdoors were already in place when I started, but a friend who’s worked there since the plant opened told me they were hauled in by truck in pieces, assembled, then tilted upright by crane like some kind of industrial barn-raising. Even if repeated in reverse, it’s a far cry from whatever I stumbled across four years ago. 

The silo I spied was being removed or installed from or on a farm just west of the Gaston Lions Club fairgrounds in rural Delaware County. Historically, that land was part of Joseph Tipple’s 280 acres, a plot that spanned County Road 850-North. In 1887, the road was known as New Corner or Two Mile Pike¹. Washington Township’s old District 9 schoolhouse stands just east². 

I assume that Two Mile Pike obtained its name honestly, since it’s a two mile trip from Gaston -originally known as New Corner- to Wheeling Pike, a road that once carried State Road 21 and US-35 from Muncie towards the town of Wheeling and parts northwest³. In 1900, the land that crazy silo rose from belonged to Solomon Mier⁴. It appears to have been a part of Barclay Long’s holdings twenty years later⁵. 

I still don’t know exactly why that silo was hanging in midair the day I stumbled past it, but the image stuck with me. It’s funny how a rural curiosity can lodge itself in your memory, especially when it echoes something from your working life! At my plant, silos rise with precision and purpose as part of a synchronized industrial dance. Out there on 850-North, the process felt more like a question mark hanging over the landscape. Still, both scenes are part of the same story: people moving material, shaping space, and building something bigger than themselves.

Sources Cited
1 Griffing, B. N. (1887). Washington Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana. map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.
2 Delaware County, Indiana. (1885 July 22). Deed Book 55. p. 381.
3 Greene, D. (1975, September 12). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
4 Delaware County Map, 1900 (1900). Indiana State Library. Web. Retrieved June 3, 2025. 
5 Plat book of Delaware County, Indiana (1938). W.W. Hixson & Co. [Rockford]. Map.