The history of the National Road -an early highway that connected Cumberland, Maryland, with Vandalia, Illinois, and blazed its way through East-Central Indiana in the 1820s- is fascinating. Along the route, travelers once relied on tombstone-shaped markers that recorded distances between towns and state lines. Many still stand in other states, but Indiana’s are few, if not far between. At least, they were.
I’ve traveled much of the National Road across Indiana, since U.S. 40 follows large portions of the old road’s original route. Most often, my trips take me from roughly the Ohio State Line to about Knightstown and include at least one old alignment.
I wind up in Richmond at the highway’s western Hoosier terminus about once a month. Jim Grey’s blog, Down the Road, is always there for me when my interest is piqued! I was perusing his archives from my trusty Tandy 1000 over a bowl of C3P-O’s when I found that two of the old road’s milestones still exist.
I was gobsmacked: I’d driven past the markers frequently, but I’d never seen either before. After a little digging on Jim’s site, I found a comment from someone who believed that a third milestone stood on Woodside Drive, northeast of Richmond proper. If you’re a frequent reader here, you know how that turned out.
That said, two legitimate National Road markers still existed, and Jim tracked both down in 2009. I wanted to see them for myself, and a careful look through Google Street View turned up both! I saved the coordinates and then headed out.
The first of Indiana’s pair of National Road markers is a mile east of Centerville, four and a half miles west of Richmond, and nine miles west of the Ohio state line. It says so on the marker, so long as you know which direction each town is in. The marker stands at the coordinates 39.819155, -84.978525 across from a Dollar General. I used a deep zoom to take some photos.
According to Jim, Indiana’s second National Road marker stood three miles west of Centerville, six miles west of Cambridge City, and 13 miles west of the state line. It was there in 2009 when Jim passed it and remained there when Google Street View came through August, 2024. When I got out to visit, however, only the milestone’s base still stood. Fortunately, you can still see it on Jim’s site.Â
It’s awesome that both mile markers stood for nearly 200 years. I chalk that up to their location on private property! Unfortunately, I wonder if that same bit of serendipity may have also led to the destruction of the second marker: without the protection that comes with being recognized as a historic artifact, a weathered stone beside a driveway might easily look like little more than an obstacle waiting to be plowed into
Even so, the fact that any of Indiana’s National Road milestones survive at all feels remarkable. Once you know they’re there, the old highway starts to look different. Every now and then, if you’re willing to slow down and do a little sleuthing, pieces of the old National Road reveal themselves along the way.
Infuriating.
I’m still bummed out I didn’t make it in time. But who could know, aside from whoever mowed it down?
I share your anger at the destruction of these milestones. I’ve always found this kind of thing interesting from a historic perspective, and feel that efforts should be made to keep them brom being destroyed.
Similarly, my family has a cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks, MO, and many years ago we discovered a US Geological Survey ‘benchmark’ within a mile of our place. It had been placed there marking 670 ft elevation above sea level in 1932. It was adjacent to a county highway but on private property. Recent development of adjoining lots resulted in someone bulldozing it away. I guess the $250 fine was too small to worry about, even if one could find someone at the agency that was interested.
Amusingly, we just recently found another benchmark nearby; this one placed at 660 feet above sea level, within 100 yards of the original one. This one was placed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1981. I took the liberty of contacting the USGS, and actually got a response. They could find neither of these in their databases! It was explained to me that with modern satellite technology and GPS, physical benchmarks are no longer needed. But it makes me sad to see such lack of interest in preserving these historic markers.
Those Benchmarks must have been cool to find, especially since USGS didn’t know of them! These milestones are similarly obsolete with GPS and similar stuff, but it doesn’t make them any less cool.