Metal truss bridges have a way of catching you off guard. There you are, cruising through the countryside, expecting the usual mix of cornfields and culverts. Suddenly, a lattice rises into view as a reminder that not everything built a century ago has given up the ghost. Delaware County’s Peterson Ford Bridge is one of those surprises.
Continue reading “The Peterson Ford Bridge at Granville”
Covered bridges feel like relics from another time. In fact, they are! The crossings are rare survivors in an age dominated by concrete and steel. Complete with roofs, decking, and siding, the cladding shielded their wooden frames from rain, sun, and rot. Still, progress wasn’t kind to them: as newer roads and heavier vehicles came along, most of the bridges were replaced or simply left to decay1. Of the thousands once built, only about one in ten managed to make it through the twentieth century2. Fortunately, one still crosses the East Fork of the Little Pigeon River in Sevier County, Tennessee.
Continue reading “Sevier County’s historic Harrisburg bridge”
I’ve spent nearly three-quarters of my life on Muncie’s west side just a stone’s throw from Yorktown. That means the intersection of North Morrison and West Petty has been part of my daily rhythm for as long as I can remember. Once I started noticing Indiana’s right-of-way markers scattered along the roadside in 2023, I realized something peculiar: I couldn’t recall a single time when the little monument on the southwest corner of that intersection wasn’t broken and toppled over. That nagging thought stuck with me, and eventually, I had to find out when it happened. That’s where this pointless deep dive begins.
Continue reading “This year’s most pointless deep dive involves a right-of-way marker”
Other than the teensy Foster Branch, I’m unaware of any fords, creeks, or rivers on Fall Creek Road between County Road 750-West and State Road 38 in Madison County. That’s what makes a lonely truss bridge plopped down in a field nearby so unexpected! Google Earth says it’s been sitting there since at least 2008. What’s the deal?
Continue reading “A landlocked bridge near Pendleton”
In western Madison County, motorists headed from Pendleton Pike towards Maple Ridge Elementary School cross over Fall Creek. Just north of there, they might spot something strange rising out of the brush: a hulking cement structure that could be mistaken for Indiana’s own Stonehenge. It isn’t an ancient ruin, though- it’s the remains of an unloading rig, a leftover from the days when a busy gravel quarry once operated nearby.
Continue reading “Pendletonhenge”
It might be a bad choice of words to say that Delaware County is awash in old truss bridges, but we’ve certainly got our share of them. I’ve covered the ones in Yorktown and Mt. Pleasant Township before, yet there’s one nearby I tend to forget about until I’m actually crossing it. That’s the Abshire Bridge, a sturdy riveted Warren pony truss over Williams Creek in the quiet backroads of Salem Township.
Continue reading “The Abshire truss bridge in Delaware County”
The interurban hasn’t run through Central Indiana for more than eighty years, but its remnants still dot the landscape if you know where to look. One of those survivors is a modest old station and powerhouse tucked just east of Springport in rural Henry County. I happened to be driving by the other day when, naturally, I had to pull over and snap a few photos. Some pieces of history are just too interesting to pass up.
Continue reading “Springport’s forgotten interurban station”
My drive home from work takes me through the downtown of a rust belt city to a state road that passes through three small towns. The bridge that spans the first two was out of commission for a while, though, which meant I had an excuse to take a winding detour that passed over a one-lane truss bridge. I’ve driven over it for many years, but for the first time in my life, I had to stop and let someone else cross over first! I felt like a pioneer.
Continue reading “For the first time in my life, I waited at an old one-lane truss bridge”
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.
Continue reading “Where Beechcraft still beckons”
In an age of GPS voice prompts and interstates, the idea of driving through open water feels almost prehistoric and exhilarating. Most Hoosiers will never drive across a ford unless they’re south of Pendleton, but I pass an old one every day on my commute: Priest’s. It’s just southwest of Yorktown.
Continue reading “Priest’s Ford in Yorktown”