We love our ice cream here in Muncie. Hunnicutt’s and Hum-Dingers have supplied us over the years, not to mention all manner of Milk Houses and Dairy Barns. We could even grab a cone or a cup from a red caboose in the seventies and eighties! It’s hard to believe, but the wayward railcar is still making memories today.
Continue reading “Muncie’s old ice cream caboose”
I’m the production planner for an Italian plastics company’s North American operation. My factory is one of the largest of its thirteen plants- it’s the only one across four continents equipped to receive materials by rail! Our yard isn’t huge, but it provides a fun chance to see a variety of fascinating graffiti as the cars change.
Continue reading “Railcar spotting”
Aside from private landing strips, Delaware County was once home to five airports! Nearly everyone here knows of the Muncie Regional Airport (otherwise known as Johnson Field) and many have at least driven past Reese Airport near Prairie Creek Reservoir. Little, if anything, remains of shuttered airparks like Silver Fox, Wall, and Magic City, but the old airport in Selma can still be seen.
Continue reading “The old Selma Airport”
Indiana University says that nearly two-thirds of the 23 million acres that make up Indiana is farmland1. As much as we’re known for corn and soybeans, that wasn’t always the case: pioneers clear cut enormous swaths of forest down in the years after they arrived here, which means tree lines that seem random to us in 2023 are usually anything but! One stretch, visible from Old US-35 in northern Delaware County, hides an old alignment of the Chicago, Indiana & Eastern Railway. New rail during the gas boom meant big money for any town on its path, and the line’s completion convinced an entire community to try and reorganize itself nearly a mile west of where it stood.
Continue reading “Wheeling, New Wheeling, and the CI&E Railroad”
Looking for a fun game to play next time you’re bored in the car? I sure was when I headed to South Carolina a couple months ago before I knew how common state right-of-way markers are. In Indiana, the monuments normally demarcate the boundaries of roads owned and operated by the department of transportation, and they’re everywhere. Sometimes, they pop up in unexpected places.
Continue reading “INDOT right-of-way markers are here, there, and everywhere”
D.B. Moore was a Delaware County farmer and an early advocate for free public roads. A resident of rural Niles Township, Moore was deeply suspicious of big-city big-wigs and their big-time motives! That’s part of what makes his story -and the story of the Dunkirk & Moore Pike1– interesting. That, and gold. Gold makes everything more intriguing.
Continue reading “The Dunkirk & Moore Pike: There’s gold in that thar…gravel?”
Early automobile clubs in Indiana began to promote national auto trails that predated official state highways around the turn of the twentieth century. By 1922, the Hoosier State Automobile Association had laid out thirty-four of them1! One was the Hub Highway, which connected Lafayette and Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1917. In Delaware and Madison Counties, the road followed Bethel Pike from Muncie to Alexandria. There, it took Washington Street towards Orestes.
Continue reading “Twelve more miles of the old Hub Highway from Bethel to Orestes”
Indiana’s early, rural roads were often little more than a pair of dirty tracks through the countryside that were unsuitable for all but the most basic forms of transportation. Around the 1860s, turnpikes sprung up to address the problem. Privately-owned toll roads that were maintained to higher standards, turnpikes got their name from a “pike,” a spiked barrier that was physically turned by the toll house operator to provide access to travelers. In the 1880s, eleven turnpikes radiated out of Muncie1, and Bethel Pike was one of them. Later, it became part of the early Hub Highway.
Continue reading “Bethel Pike: Eight miles of the old Hub Highway from Muncie to Bethel”
With only one road in and one road out over the Dawhoo River, Edisto Island -a barrier island between Savannah and Charleston- is a place that seems hidden from the world in many ways. That’s great for tourists and vacationers! Unfortunately, its detachment from the rest of South Carolina has presented the island’s inhabitants with many difficulties over the years.
Continue reading “The Bridge to Edisto Island, South Carolina”
“In all thy ways acknowledge him,” directs Proverbs 3:6 in the King James Bible, “and he shall direct thy paths.” A narrow, concrete lane that spans nearly a third of a mile in rural Delaware County proves that members of the Eden United Church of Christ took their verses to heart: Around 1907, the church built a sidewalk to connect the nearest interurban stop to the congregation’s brand-new sanctuary.
Continue reading “Eden Church’s sidewalk to righteousness in Delaware County”
Ted Shideler 