The interurban electric railway hasn’t carried passengers through central Indiana for more than eighty years. If you slow down, though, traces of it still hide in plain sight. One of the most prominent survivors is Hartford City’s old traction station at the southeast corner of South Jefferson and East Water Streets.
The Muncie, Hartford & Fort Wayne Railway was surveyed in December, 19001. From Muncie, the route followed Mulberry Street across the White River, then ran along Granville Avenue before peeling off northwest to follow the Lake Erie and Western railroad through Royerton, Shideler, and Eaton2. Just south of Hartford City, the interurban split from the railroad at Big Lick Creek and angled into town before taking Jefferson Street north. Hartford City’s original interurban station stood in an alley east of Jefferson between Washington and Water Streets3.
Union Traction Company of Indiana acquired the Muncie, Hartford & Fort Wayne Railway in 19064. Two years later, the line’s new owners erected a second interurban station- the one that still stands today. From it, the interurban continued north along Jefferson Street just east of the Blackford County Courthouse before it angled northeast at Park Avenue. The line met back up with the old Lake Erie and Western just past County Road 100-East and followed it through Montpelier, Keystone, and Poneto en route to Bluffton5.
Some of that routing is still visible today- especially on Google Maps. Its persistence is a little amazing since the line ceased to operate in January 19416! Eighty-plus years after the last car rattled to a stop, the interurban still manages to leave a footprint. You can trace it in the odd angles of streets, in unexplained clearings beside rail lines, and in buildings like Hartford City’s traction station- now home to the Depot Bar and Grill.
Sources Cited
1 Work Is To Begin (1900, November 30). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1.
2 Spurgeon, B. (1991, August 28). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Union Traction Co. Of Indiana. Abandoned Interurban History. Indiana Railroads and Abandoned Interurban Rails. Google Map. Web. Retrieved December 27, 2025.
4 (See footnote 2).
5 (See footnote 3).
6 Spurgeon, B. (1991, September 24). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 6.
My heart aches for the fact that this infrastructure was created and then entirely destroyed. I cannot fathom how different this country would be if we had kept our rail network.
Sadly wasn’t a money maker.
It’s amazing how quickly the era if the inter-urban train came and went. Henry Ford really changed everything.
Big interurban historian here…a group in Hamilton County saved the interurban collection at the Indiana Transportation Museum when ITM went belly up and is currently restoring one of the UTC cars:
https://www.hoosiertrolley.org/
There were remnants of it running through Shideler a while back and the station, to my knowledge, also still stands in Albany. You can actually still see the roadbed north of Albany on 67.
Fascinating time period – similar to the canal boom craze that happened earlier.