mobilene

One of the things I have long noticed as I've driven the Michigan Road between my home and South Bend is how many old houses sit on it. Within three miles in either direction of my house I count at least 4 structures built in the 1800s along the MR. One of them, essentially around the corner from my house, is for sale! I haven't covered every inch of Indiana road, but in my experience anyway no (once or currently) major Indiana road boasts the density of old homes as the Michigan Road. The homes also help tell the road's story. The road went in, and people built on it to capitalize on it. I think the turn of events that preserved the road also helped preserve these houses. If the MR from here to Logansport had become an Interstate, for example, or even a four-lane divided US highway, most of these homes would have been lost. I do plan to do as much then-and-now stuff as I can as I write my road reports for jimgrey.net. I regularly search eBay for postcards from along the road, and I have found a few sites like the one you link to that has photos. I was so excited to get out on the road that I didn't have my research lined up for these two trips, but that only means, drat the luck, that as I find photos from Indy south that I want to check out today, I'll just have to force myself to drive back down there! I do have some worry about rights. Photos published before a certain time -- 1910? 1916? something -- can be published freely, but after that there are rules. If I get something from some library's digital archive, I don't want to abuse it. The only way I could tell that the Minear building in the before photo you linked was in the same block is because of the Oddfellows building at the north end of the block (the tallest building) -- most of that block is different today. I hope to get started writing this up pretty soon, but I'm about to enter a busy few weeks, so we'll see. This will be different from my past writeups in that in the past, I write it up and that's that. But this will be a living set of Web pages for some time as I find more information and make return trips to experience/photograph things I missed before. jim

Oh! In Indiana, that's optional! We're also allowed to treat the white-bordered Stop signs as Yield signs, too. jim

The grass needed cut, the weeds needed sprayed with Roundup, the shrubs desperately (desperately!) needed cut back, and the house needed to be cleaned -- but I resumed my Michigan Road trip today anyway. And what a glorious day it was for it! It was sunny and warm all day, and despite being a holiday weekend, traffic wasn't too bad. Maybe that's because of gas prices -- and maybe it's because I was on the Michigan Road, often in plain sight of I-74, where all the cars seemed to be. I drove to where I left off last time, the little town of Napoleon, and headed back north. I passed through Greensburg -- a very nice town -- and Shelbyville -- a town in need of some TLC -- along the way. I rolled video as I drove the short one-lane alignment (and its one-lane bridge) of the MR north of Greensburg. I got photos of three blocks worth of a narrow road that is probably the MR's original alignment, bypassed by State Road 44 in Shelbyville. I drove the mile-long section of the MR that I-74 orphaned around Pleasant View and learned that there really isn't anything in Pleasant View except a gas station, a few houses, and a 1946 Dodge. And there I ended today's journey, conveniently right at the Marion County (Indianapolis) line. At the moment I am writing this, I am dumping photos into my Flickr space and uploading video of the one-lane alignment to my space. They should finish sometime and you can go see them. The photos are roughly in order (though Flickr may have reversed them) but at this moment have no meaningful info attached to them; I'll add some over the next few days. It was a great trip. I had a ball today. Next up: Marion County (Indianapolis). I figure I can make a whole day out of just one county. jim

http://hoosierhappenings.blogspot.com/2008/05/road-trip.html This is a blog I follow; sometimes he goes out on the road. jim

I've started looking at the photos. I could spend hours in there! Glad you figured out how to automate the geotagging. jim

Chris, thanks for that link. It helps me answer a riddle I hadn't gotten around to solving yet, namely, the MR's original route north from Washington St. I-65 did a real number on the MR, obliterating probably a mile and a half of it. Meanwhile, it's interesting to see how the route was named in those days. jim

Denny, thanks for sharing your trip! I liked the pic of the stone bridge with the two men sitting along the edge. If they had been holding fishing poles, it could have been a study for a Normal Rockwell painting! Your trip renewed my itch to drive the NR east from here all the way to Cumberland. Maybe next year, after I finish with the Michigan Road.

I am finding that there is so much to see within two hours of my house that I can stay busy and happy on the road for probably the next three or four years!

I haven't heard much lately about the push to rename Michigan Road in Indy to MLK. I have to assume the idea is at least on life support. I'm not opposed to part of their goal -- to name a street MLK that isn't in a blighted ghetto neighborhood, as the current MLK is -- but as you might guess, I want them to pick a road without the historical significance of the Michigan Road. Chris, I didn't know about the Michigan Road name confusion on the Northside. All the old timers I know still call the road 421 anyway! I have lived in Indy long enough that I remember Michigan Road being two lanes between 71st and 86th Sts. -- and being thrilled beyond measure when the road was widened, because that segment was a major bottleneck. Do you have any old maps showing the MR being labeled MR through town? All my maps show Northwestern/Southwestern and MR north of about 38th St. By the way, I've described, tagged, and mapped about half of the Flickr set now. jim

Hmmmmm. What interesting perspective. I have no (zero, nada, zilch) experience in this realm myself. So I'll keep what you've said in mind should anything come to be with this other fellow! jim

I wrote two posts at my blog recently about my drive on Saturday, and it attracted the attention of a fellow in northern Indiana with some connections to state agencies and the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. He wrote telling me that he is very interested in seeing the Michigan Road gain historic byway status, and that he has gotten the state and the Historic Landmarks Foundation interested too, but now it's a matter of money to fund the necessary studies to make that happen. I wanted to put this on the radar of my fellow Hoosier roadfans. Perhaps there's enough interest here that grassroots efforts can help, but I don't have much of a clue how to go about that. jim

Isn't that drive up to the stone bridge something else? You round that curve and she reveals herself. It was no less exciting this time as it was when I went that way the first time back in February. The bridges give no information about their ages, which is why I refer to them with feminine pronouns. I think it's safe to assume these bridges are from the 1800s based on construction. I parked my car near the bridge to get photos, and I swear every local within five miles came by to make sure my car hadn't broken down. One woman started to take me to task for leaving my dogs in my allegedly broken-down car! I've slowly been tagging the photos on Flickr and I've now tagged everything in Madison before I actually got on the Michigan Road. In time, I'll place all the shots on the map, too. The Moon-Lite Motel is a going concern, but I don't know if the neon works. I can see that I will have to make return visits to photograph all this neon at night. My photos this time leave a lot to be desired, I think. I learned it's really hard to get a steady shot if you have two big dogs on a leash with you. Also, there are few good places to pull over on the Michigan Road down there, so I took a lot of photos really quick with my car sitting on the road. Fortunately, I encountered very little traffic. And my camera's lens issue ruined probably a dozen shots. I did my best to notice that at the time I took the photo so I could re-shoot, but I didn't get them all. It would be great to go to Madison for the annual showing of Some Came Running! My stepson's father was in the Air National Guard and was actually in charge of the Air Guard portion of Jefferson Proving Ground for several years. My stepson spent quite a bit of time inside. He said there were ruins of buildings inside from the days before WW II when the military took over the land. I've seen photos of a schoolhouse and a stone arch bridge that still stand inside. My old maps show a couple towns on that land. The first cemetery photos in my Flickr set are, gulp, cemeteries within what is now JPG that were relocated when the government took over the land. Can you imagine digging up graves from the early and mid 1800s? jim

My trip Saturday was great! Despite stepping in a mud puddle early during the trip and having a wet foot all day. Despite my damaged camera botching several photos. Despite a $150 speeding ticket. (I was going about 60, highway speed -- but I didn't realize I was still within the Shelbyville city limits, where the speed limit was 30. The cop could have impounded my car on the spot.) I followed US 421 to Madison. Even though the Michigan Road starts several blocks north of the Ohio River, I went down to the river along West St. and worked my way north, taking photos of historic downtown Madison, too. The MR starts just north of 6th St. at West St. The MR becomes US 421 for a while, but then the old MR veers away all the way to the town of Napoleon. I took a lot of photos along the way and when I reached Napoleon, I headed back south on 421. The old auto trails guides and maps all ignore the original MR and label as the MR what is now 421. So I'm calling that stretch a "later alignment" and got photos of it too. I uploaded a brief video from just beyond where the MR splits from 421 north of Madison. In the video, I drive over a one-lane stone bridge. I uploaded all the photos that turned out in my Flickr space and created a Michigan Road set for them. I haven't labeled them yet (beyond "Along the Michigan Road") but they are in order from south to north. The photos of the junked school buses are the first I took after I turned tail at Napoleon, went back south on 421, and then headed back north. I'll add better labels as I have time today and tomorrow. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilene/sets...57605001968216/

My research has been limited to what I can find on the Internet. This has been a pretty rich resource itself. I've found maps from county atlases going back 150 years that suggest that the Michigan Road is, except for those situations noted earlier, largely fully intact. I find this amazing because it has never had a continuous state designation in the modern era. Today, US 20, US 35, SR 25, SR 29, and US 421 run over parts of it (and a couple state routes multiplex on it for short stretches). In the past, part of Old US 31 ran along it. Even though it is not maintained as a continuous road today, you can get on it in Madison and, except for where it is buried under I-74 and where you can't cross the railroad track east of Rolling Prairie, drive it all the way to Michigan City. I regularly drive the MR from my house to my parents' house in South Bend. I have once driven it from Madison to my house. And I have once driven most of the route between Michigan City and South Bend, missing the endpoint in Mich City, a bypassed alignment through unincorporated Springville, and the bypassed alignment through Rolling Prairie. So while I intend to do the library research, I have decided to do it with through knowledge of the road's current context. In other words, I'm gonna drive the thing first!! And as I do more serious research, I'll probably keep driving it again and again to go back and look for things I might have missed. The most fun I've had doing research so far is in buying several postcards on eBay showing scenes from the road at various times between about 1900 and 1960. I have only a dozen of them so far, but I'll keep looking. I'm eager to see what buildings remain today. I do hope to become the expert on this road. After I've driven and researched it enough, maybe I'll write a book. jim

I drive to work every day along Spring Mill Road. It parallels US 31 (Meridian St.) in northern Marion County and in Hamilton County, but is the older road, showing up on maps going back to the 1850s. It was a country road for more than 100 years, but as the urbs pushed out to the suburbs, neighborhoods were built along it. In Indy, you get the low ranch houses typical here, but north in Hamilton County you get gated communities set back from the road. Driving it up there you sometimes don't realize how suburban the area really is. Well, except for all the traffic. Anyway, the road is really pretty in the springtime. I wrote about the road and shared some springtime pictures at my blog. http://jimgrey.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/sp...ring-mill-road/ http://jimgrey.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/sp...ll-road-photos/

Interesting writeup about an 1820 building used as a tavern and stagecoach stop along the National Road in West Virginia. http://ryan4gopackgo.blogspot.com/2008/05/...re-no-more.html

Hooray!!

If the weather holds, on Saturday I will begin to travel and document the Michigan Road in Indiana. For those who missed my earlier words on this topic, the Michigan Road was built in the 1830s using state funds. Some sources I've read call it the first state highway, but I'm pretty sure the Mauxferry Road and the Madison State Road, both older than the Michigan Road, were built with state funds. But where the Mauxferry Road and the Madison State Road were built to carry people from the south, where the bulk of Indiana's population lived, to Indianapolis, the Michigan Road was built to carry people from the south to the north, allowing the north to be settled. The Michigan Road's original route is mostly intact. I know of only a few exceptions, most notably that some of the road is buried under I-74 southeast of Indianapolis, and a railroad crossing appears to have been removed when US 20 was routed around Rolling Prairie near the Michigan line in the 1940s meaning you can't drive over the tracks anymore. But there's plenty of excellent goodness left. Two one-lane 1800s bridges remain, as do two short one-lane alignments. There are three alignments bypassed by modern highways, at least one of which has never been part of the state highway system. And along the way there are a whole bunch of houses built in the 1800s when the road was new. I'm going to start in Madison on Saturday and take my time. Unlike my usual trips, I will linger as long as I darn well please over any section of the route, and just head home when I run out of daylight. I will keep going back all summer when I can get away, and I'll take the dogs with me as long as they are healthy (my Rottweiler was diagnosed with cancer this week). I will do my usual Web writeups, but since it takes me for-freeking-ever to get to that I'll share the best photos here first. I have slowly been buying old postcards via eBay showing scenes along the route, from south to north, to give a flavor of the road from as much as 100 years ago, and I'll post some of those images too. jim

I liked the video of Eureka Springs best. Reminded me of Europe, with all the buildings right on the street and so close together! jim

What a nice tribute to your father. You are fortunate to have that recording. For many of us, our family's talents are never captured. Of course, every time I hear Old Man River, I think of Stan Freberg's version, Elderly Man River.

Definitely not a road for the timid! jim

That's quite a rock! Wouldn't want to take that curve too fast driving a semi -- you could bash the side of the trailer into that rock!

Nice! I wonder how that NR marker got so far away from home.

No more fun with stop signs in Oak Lawn, IL. http://jalopnik.com/386662/illinois-mayor-...ious-stop-signs

DashboardCam™ videos seem always to make it look like you're going faster than you are. I think it's kind of like how being on TV always makes you look fatter than you are. These videos are great! I liked the one of the guys kicking oranges off the truck with their feet, and the one of going over the DH bridge, the best.