johnu11

I actually drive part of the old Lincoln Highway to work every day. It's Joliet Road and hooks up on the west end of Valparaiso at SR 130 and wobbles west parallel to US 30 and eventually runs into US 30. If you want, you can eventually turn off onto the old route again just before the Lake County line and take it around through Merrillville on to Schererville. I would not recommend this if you were a truck driver or in a rush. It's also a nonstop deer crossing at night!

Complete with Vaughn Monroe and Perry Como music. I also wish I could buy a milk shake for those prices!

Jim: I enjoyed your blog and the photos on it. Thought I'd leave this note here about Richmond. I spent part of my younger years either working there or visiting. One of my memories was an old Miller Dairy soda fountain just the other side of the river. We'd go there maybe once a month and get a real honest chocolate shake. This was back in the late 50s. Now for kids from Fairfield, that was big doin's!!! Richmond has fallen on hard times, for those who don't realize it. The current recession has been a very painful event there. But there are still some wonderful things to do and see around there, and the people were always just ... the best. Take U.S. 27 south through Liberty and another 6 or 7 miles, you are at the Brookville Lake. There, you can see Fairfield if you look into the water on the right angle of the sun.

If you canoe, you've obviously done Metamora. Lots of history out that way, but it's essentially overrated because of commercial investment. Another story, just interesting and I won't burden the board with more. All the same, canoeing the Whitewater was always considered a thrill for enthusiasts. I never did it. The old east fork that went through Fairfield was dammed up before that sport caught on in the valley. I should think the river is much cleaner now than before. New Trenton, BTW, is one of the oldest settlements in the territory. We are talking around the year 1800. In researching Fairfield, I learned a lot about that history. Again, a different story.

Actually, you can't take the route as it was back when I was a teenager. You can go out to the old bridge, turn back, and go around and see it from the other side. But if you try to track the old SR 1 up Southgate Hill, you will be confounded. It's not accessible now that I can tell. I've tried to find it. It can be seen from below, the hillside, that is, and I assume a road is still "up there." But ... but you can go up a steep hill to an area we refer to laughingly as Gobbler's Knob. I do NOT know why, OK? Apparently my grandfather has a connection to the naming of that area as he was the county surveyor way back in the 1930s and 40s and named many of the roads. That was before the 911 addresses that are like 112432 East County Road W. The road up to Gobblers Knob is a county road and is pretty narrow, not nearly as deadly as Southgate Hill ever was. I use the term "deadly" in a very serious fashion. The old highway was very very very dangerous. But if you are edgy about going up high hills with steep dropoffs, Gobblers Knob will work nicely for you. If you are hankering to see that part of Indiana, naturally it's hilly which lends itself to some pretty awesome fall color. If you go back north toward Brookville, you get to see the lake, which covers the town where I grew up. Another tale. My Website explores that. I add that link, and BTW, it's NOT a commercial site so there's no advertising connected to the story. http://www.fairfieldindiana.com/

Hoosiers are from well, the Crossroads of America. It's also a place where if you want to get someplace, you gotta go someplace else first. As for the SR 1 bridge, that's a relic that defies description. The picture spins its own yarns. If you take SR229 at Batesville (Ripley Co.) from I-74 north, you go to a little village named Oldenburg, well worth the trip. Then if you head north, you go through Peppertown (not well worth it except for the peculiar little Lutheran church there that's about 1,000 years old) ... but what gets to be fun is the highway itself. We are talking a roller coaster ... dip after dip ... and if you learn to time your speed, it can be a gastronomical extravaganza! Sooner or later, you have to decide if you want to go to Laurel on SR 121 ... back in there you can find some excitement. I leave you with my own slice of Indiana history. www.fairfieldindiana.com

Well, I loaded the picture. I just enjoy technology.

I just joined this Forum and I am snooping. I see a lot of you are exploring Indiana, which is fairly nice. I also live there. I am posting a picture of a bridge over the Whitewater River in the nondescript town of Cedar Grove, in southern Franklin County. Now you cannot cross this bridge and it should be obvious why. The bridge is actually the route across the river from what used to be S.R. 1 from Cedar Grove (U.S. 52) and southward toward Lawrenceburg. It took you up Southgate Hill, and brother ... that was a white-knuckler. No truck ever made it down or up due to the hairpin at the base of the hill. The road was rerouted years ago and bypassed the little town of St. Leon and it joins SR 46 near the little town of Lawrenceville. Methinks this bridge still stands for historic reasons and may have once been part of a project that since ran out of money. Hell, I would not want to walk across this thing ... and to think that we used to drive over it often without even (urp) thinking. I did have a moment on Southgate Hill though, when I was 19. There were no guardrails, FWIW. I decided to hit the hillside instead.

Some interesting trivia on this movie, which I've watched several times (and ... lawd, how I spot the plot flaws!!) and on the actual game, which I've seen on DVD four times (for reasons that do not escape me.) 1. Yes, I agree that the Bearcats were outcoached and that was clear from the very start of the game. How you beat the stall is easy against bad teams. But against Milan, not as easy. These kids had played together for 8 years and were very talented. Muncie's talent was less apparent to me in seeing the game. The shot selection was very poor. 2. Plump actually played THREE years at Butler. Frosh were not eligible in those days. I have met the man and he is a fairly pleasant fellow. 3. The people of Milan have taken on an air of arrogance in years since "Hoosiers" and are generally accused of being "We're Milan and that makes US important" to the rest of Indiana. To some, that's an unappreciative entitlement attitude. The game, yes ... for a lot of people, they do not realize this game was played very much at the small-school level in the days of Milan. Tiny schools of 40 or 50 students had a team, mostly bad teams. A lot of history there lost on the doorstep of the consolidated county schools out in the beanfields that they call West Central or Eastern or just "Blankety County." In that respect, "Hoosiers" captures so much of what really happened. As for the movie, they won the sectional, a game in the regional and then the state title. In truth, in those days, a team had to win 10 games to win the title. It was grueling emotionally and physically, even for kids from big schools. The smaller the school, the more the pressure by Semistate time and the courts got bigger. Little schools sometimes played in gyms with 30 x 70 foot courts. At Butler, it was full-size and believe me, that matters!! Winning state was very difficult. And the references to Hebron ... vastly overlooked. Illinois missed a moment there. History sticks around, though, and I have some proof of that on my own blog. I will add that link here about another town's glory lost to the weeds. http://johnu1.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-thi...us-depends.html John