Category Found Anderson

An empty Sears in Anderson

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

A few years back, I found myself driving through Anderson when I couldn’t resist pulling over at the long-shuttered Mounds Mall. At the time, rumors swirled that the place might make a comeback. Years have passed, though, and those plans never left the drawing board. Today, Sears -and the rest of the mall- remains frozen in time, empty and crumbling. It’s a ghost of a retail empire that once was.

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A quick trip to Mendon

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 4 min.

I first heard of Mendon, Indiana, while I chased down a photo of its old T-shaped schoolhouse. The tiny community sits just a few miles south of Pendleton, tucked off State Road 9, and I worked it into a larger schoolhouse hunt that took me through several townships. When I finally rolled into town, I was met with a surprise- there was no school in sight! I parked in the cemetery, checked my bearings, and only then realized the building had recently been demolished. Even so, Mendon hasn’t lost all of its charm. For a history buff, the crossroads still has a few stories left to tell.

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Seven window shots of places on my commute I haven’t written about yet

Ted Shideler 11 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

This blog has always been about chasing down the places that spark my curiosity and finding out everything I can about them. Most recently, I’ve discovered that my daily commute from Muncie to Anderson is packed with sites to absorb! I’ve spotted several that made me reach for my phone and snap a quick photo, so here are seven hasty shots of buildings I haven’t written about yet. 

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Where Beechcraft still beckons

Ted Shideler 4 Comments
Read time: 3 min.

Airports are funny places. On one hand, you’ve got behemoths like Chicago O’Hare or Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, where hundreds of flights take off and land every day in a carefully choreographed frenzy. On the other, there’s your Uncle Clem easing his Cessna 172 onto a sod strip framed by a pair of cornfields. Somewhere in the middle lies a forgotten kind of airport like the one just southeast of Alexandria, Indiana. For most of its life, it went by the name Knotts Field1. 

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Another old Village Pantry in Anderson, spotted in the wild

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 2 min.

Yorktown-based Marsh Supermarkets entered the booming, burgeoning convenience store market back in 1966. Fast-forward forty years, and they’d built a network of 154 Village Pantries across Indiana and Ohio! Many of the oldest have found second or third lives as something new, and I try to snap a quick photo whenever I drive past one.

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A towering presence in Anderson

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

Not every mid-sized Rust Belt city can boast a century-old skyscraper that blends the elegance of Art Deco with the soaring grandeur of Gothic Revival, but Anderson, Indiana, can. Despite its troubled past, the striking structure once known as the Tower Hotel still rises high above the downtown streetscape. It’s home to apartments today.

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A ford excursion

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 5 min.

I was aimlessly cruising around Google Maps a month ago when I stumbled on something unexpected just south of Pendleton- a ford. It looked like a real, drive-your-vehicle-through-the-creek kind of deal! A week of heavy rains had closed the road when I first visited, but my mom and I were in the neighborhood yesterday. With a Kia Sedona instead of a covered wagon, we set out on a good old-fashioned ford excursion.

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A ford expedition

Ted Shideler 12 Comments
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.

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When the lights went out at the Western Hotel

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 4 min.

A couple of weeks ago, a series of storms tore through my corner of Indiana with a vengeance. My home was spared, but others weren’t so lucky. An old schoolhouse near Lapel took a hard hit, and buildings across the region -barns, sheds, and dwellings- were left damaged or destroyed. The winds also howled through eastern Madison County. Ripping through Camp Chesterfield, they toppled a piece of history: the vintage neon sign of the Western Hotel.

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Spotted in the wild: an old Village Pantry in Pendleton

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 2 min.

In 1966, Yorktown-based Marsh Supermarkets made waves when it entered the fast-growing convenience store segment. By the time the company was sold to a private equity firm forty years later, it operated 154 Village Pantries around Indiana and Ohio! Many of the oldest have been repurposed, and I try to take a photo whenever I drive past one.

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