Tag Muncie Indiana

Muncie’s Mansfield Park from land, air, and sea

Ted Shideler 1 Comment
Read time: 9 min.

If you’re like me, you’re interested in the history of the day-to-day places you go to, walk around, or drive past. A place that’s long piqued my interest is Mansfield Park, one of Muncie’s most unique recreational areas. I’d been going there to catch bluegill for years before I decided to look into its story. Later, I decided to explore the place even more through the use of a couple of drones.

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The Dunkirk & Moore Pike: There’s gold in that thar…gravel?

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

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.

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Meijer’s whimsical pineapple of discovery

Ted Shideler 4 Comments
Read time: 8 min.

When Grand Rapids-based Meijer decided to expand the reach of its Michigan hypermarkets to a trio of new states in the early 1990s, officials decided that a unique aesthetic was necessary to introduce their massive stores to a new batch of customers. There’s little that can be done to make a 200,000-square-foot building unique, but Meijer did just that, in large part through the use of a pineapple.

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Hamilton Township’s Jake’s Creek schoolhouse in Delaware County

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Read time: 2 min.

It’s believed that Thomas Weir taught the first District 6 school in Hamilton Township. In 1855, a frame schoolhouse was built at the southwest corner of the present-day intersection of North Everett Road and West Moore Road1. It burned in 1867. A new school was built to replace it the following year2.

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Twelve more miles of the old Hub Highway from Bethel to Orestes

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 9 min.

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.

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Abandoned Marsh: North Walnut Street in Muncie

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Read time: < 1 min.

“Abandoned Marsh” was my project to stylistically document the Marsh supermarkets closed by Sun Capital Partners, an investment firm that owned the home-grown company for the final decade of its eighty-six year history. Marsh was a regional grocery store chain that was founded in Muncie and eventually grew to encompass 157 supermarkets, 154 convenience stores, three florists, two catering services, and a restaurant. The last Marsh supermarket closed in 2017.

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Abandoned Marsh: West Bethel Avenue in Muncie

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 2 min.

In 2016, I came across an article on Vice about a guy named Brandon Bird who traveled the country making impressionist paintings of Sears department stores. “It’s funny because [I’m] taking the time to do this thing that nobody cares about,” the artist said. “You look at it, and you’re like, Why did somebody make this?” I enjoyed the post but forgot about it until the following summer when I was eating some onion rings in the Burger King parking lot. I happened to look out my window towards an old Marsh supermarket, and I was struck by how the building seemed to divide its grim-looking parking lot from the sky like a brick-and-mortar cigar band. Zesty Sauce dribbling down my shirtfront, my “Abandoned Marsh” project started that day: If Brandon Bird could document Sears, I could certainly document Marsh!

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