Tag rural Indiana

LaGrange County’s Oak Grove schoolhouse sits in the shadow of a Long Line tower

Ted Shideler 3 Comments
Read time: 3 min.

My mom and I had eyes on the old Long Line tower near LaGrange when we noticed an old schoolhouse in unusually-tidy repair. I tend to be single-minded on research trips, but Mom insisted I take a photo. I did, and here’s all I’ve been able to uncover about Bloomfield Township’s Oak Grove Schoolhouse in LaGrange County.

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Pleasant Lake’s ex-Long Line tower

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: < 1 min.

For many years, one of AT&T’s Long Line microwave relay towers stood in Pleasant Lake, Indiana. The tower was built around 19601. Despite its proximity to the tower in Angola, the two didn’t interface. Pleasant Lake’s relayed a signal from 28.5 miles away in West Unity, Ohio, to another tower 28 miles away near Albion2. 

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Monroe Township’s Summers/Fairview schoolhouse in Madison County

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Read time: 2 min.

William Summers deeded the land for Monroe Township’s original District 10 schoolhouse, a log cabin, in 18571. A year later, the building was displaced by a frame structure. The second school was moved across the road to become a church in 1889, when a brick schoolhouse was built on its original site2.

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Forgotten Photos of Huntington’s Roush Lake Dam

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

The Wabash River is a force to be reckoned with. As many as two hundred people perished during the Great Flood of 1913, which left the swollen waters of the Wabash sprawling seven miles wide1! Fortunately, the J. Edward Roush Dam has held the river’s mighty waters back for half a century. In what’s becoming an occasional theme here, I recently found some photos I took of it fourteen years ago.

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Vernon Township’s Denney schoolhouse in Hancock County

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Read time: 2 min.

A schoolhouse has sat at the corner of County Road 700-North and Fortville Pike in Hancock County for more than a hundred and fifty years1. In 1852, Alfred Denney was among several people who organized German Baptist services in the first log structure. A frame replacement was destroyed by fire in 1884, and the extant brick schoolhouse was erected the following year2.

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Flowing wells are in the news

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 5 min.

It’s ironic that flowing wells, remnants from the gas boom era, are making headlines more than a century after they fell into obscurity. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s a good thing: on Thursday, the Anderson Herald Bulletin published an article titled “Agencies grapple with location, plugging abandoned wells.” I got asked to be interviewed for the story.

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