Indiana's Michigan Road: a Historic Byway

[mobilene]

Today the Historic Michigan Road Byway Committee (of which I'm co-chair) received word from the Indiana Department of Transportation that our application to name the Michigan Road a Historic Byway was approved.  Lt. Governor Becky Skillman signed the order.

The Michigan Road is Indiana's first state-funded highway, built in the 1830s and stretching from Madison on the Ohio River, through Greensburg, Shelbyville, Indianapolis, Logansport, Rochester, Plymouth, and South Bend, and ending in Michigan City on Lake Michigan.  It was built to provide a critical transportation link from southern Indiana to the new capital in Indianapolis, and to allow settlement of northern Indiana.  It is still driveable end-to-end today, with a few minor detours that return you to the road's original path.  The route is essentially US 421/old US 421 through Indianapolis, then State Road 29 to Logansport, State Road 25 to Rochester, old US 31/US 31 to South Bend, old US 20/US 20 to Michigan City, and a short bit of US 12 within Michigan City.

If you'd like to virtually tour the road yourself, go here: http://jimgrey.net/Roads/MichiganRoad/index.htm

The Byway Committee has several next steps. First, we need to become a legal entity; probably a 501(c)(3).  Then we need to secure funds for our operations and next initiatives, which include creating marketing plans and signing the route.

-Jim

[NWI_Irish96]

Learned something new today--always thought that the road ended in South Bend and never knew it went to Michigan City.

[NE2]

Some details:
Napoleon
http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/23862/Jackson++Ballstown/Ripley+County+1883/Indiana/
http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/176877/Jackson+Township++Napoleon++Milan++Spades++Morris+++Left/Ripley+County+1900/Indiana/

It's possible that in Greensburg there was no "official" route, since the town was settled before the road came through.

Adams
http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/178138/Decatur+County+Map/Decatur+County+1882/Indiana/ shows that it used what's now CR 450N north of Clifty Creek.

Shelby
If the piece of East Broadway Street east of Vine was the Michigan Road, it was bypassed early: http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/214372/Shelbyville++Fairland++Fountaintown++Norristown+++Right/Shelby+County+1880/Indiana/
As with Greensburg, there may have been no official routing.

Indianapolis
Same caveat about routing downtown.
It's possible that it crossed Fall Creek east of the current bridge: http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/1599384/Plate+032/Indianapolis+1908c/Indiana/

Logansport and South Bend too may have had no official route.


I've mapped out the historic route as much as I could: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?relation=1765033

[mobilene]

Some time ago I traced the route on Google Maps:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=205165255168667637225.0004468aa6e49bef09a82&msa=0

I also posted turn-by-turn driving directions at www.historicmichiganroad.org.

There are only three places where I'm not 100% certain of the original route: through Greensburg and Logansport, and how the road gets from Washington St. to MLK Jr. Blvd in Indianapolis. 

My research on Logansport suggests that the road entered town on Burlington Ave and exited on Michigan Ave, but that there was no official routing through town.  I would not be surprised to find that it was the same in Greensburg.  So for both towns, when I wrote that part of the byway application I made reasonable routes through town and let it be.  (Interesting: When I created the routing this wasn't the case, but Google Maps now labels some things as "Michigan Ave" in Greensburg that suggest a different routing for the road than the one I put in the application.)

I got an e-mail last year from an old-timer who has lived his whole life on a farm on the MR between Shelbyville and Greensburg, and he remembers when the Dept of Highways rerouted the road slightly in his area, building new bridges and moving/widening some curves.  If you trace the road there you can see how some driveways might have been the original route.  The fellow said that a few sections were outright abandoned, and brick road lurks beneath some grass in some farmers' fields today.

For Indianapolis, research revealed only the 1910s "auto trails" route for the road, or should I say routes, as it appears to have changed slightly over time.  All of those routes smelled to me like reroutings.  So I made an educated guess that the MR follows Washington St. to West St., and then picks up MLK Jr. Blvd. (fmrly Northwestern Ave).

The route in South Bend is clear: Michigan St. north to LaSalle St., then LaSalle west to Lincolnway West.  Before the LH came to South Bend, Lincolnway West was Michigan Ave., reflecting the road's roots. 

For me, the saddest part of the MR is the five miles or so of it that are buried under I-74.  While we positioned the byway as stimulating heritage tourism and economic development, my secret desire is that we can leverage the byway's status to prevent more of this road from being destroyed like this.

-Jim

[NE2]

It's important to remember how a route is defined:
(a) by signage
(b) by maintenance

Auto trails only had signage. These historic roads (usually) only had maintenance (or sometimes just state funding for construction). Where the road emptied onto existing city streets, it was not necessary to construct a new road, and so a continuous route may not have been defined. You may have to look through contemporary city or state records to get a definite answer.


Your Google Maps trace is missing several pieces of old alignment that I list in my above post (not counting obvious ones that just cut a corner) [wait for the relation to load]:
*Napoleon
*Adams
*Deer Creek (this is on your site but not the trace)


By the way, the obvious straight line through the JPG does appear to have some remaining traces on aerials. Yet the road was already realigned to the east by 1883: http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/23868/Shelby++Sunman/Ripley+County+1883/Indiana/ Perhaps the terrain proved problematic.


Here's the auto trail route from 1918: 390, 697, 264, 175, 73 It follows Railroad Road from Dabney to Osgood and then US 421 back to Napoleon, Main-Broadway-North-Jackson in Greensburg, the old route at Adams, Washington-Meridian-30th (mileage is wrong, but the reverse mileage on Route 182 is fine)-MLK in Indianapolis, 3rd-Broadway-6th in Logansport, and Washington-Main-LaSalle in South Bend.

[mobilene]

Bear in mind that I needed to define a route that was driveable.  So I absolutely didn't call out the original routing through Napoleon, near Adams, and near Deer Creek -- because you can't drive them anymore, at least not continuously. 

The application does call out the abandoned section at Deer Creek because it is quite visible and lined on each side by old sycamore trees -- there's a historical marker there naming it Sycamore Row.  The lore is that this section of the road was corduroyed with green sycamore logs, and new trees grew out of either end.  Sounds far-fetched to me, but that's the lore anyway, and it earned the place the historical marker.  Unbelievably, this segment was in use through the mid-1980s.  Dig how narrow:


Sycamore Row by mobilene, on Flickr

If you use Google Street View along Old US 421 near Adams, you can see a grassy area where the road used to go just next to Mt. Hebron Cemetery.  It looks like I-74 obliterated some of the route, which resumes later as CR 450. That's extremely interesting to an old-alignment nut like me, but  but doesn't tickle INDOT in the least, and is hard to sell to the communities along the route who are mostly interested in the byway because it promises to bring people to their towns to spend money!

Thanks for saying that you see traces of the road through JPG; it's nice to have corroboration of my suspicions.  I found an 1870 map that shows the current routing..  Maybe some day I'll find out exactly why they moved the road.  There's a stone bridge on the "new" alignment that dates to the early 1900s; it's a real beauty.


Stone bridge, Michigan Road by mobilene, on Flickr

I have a couple Midwestern ABBs here in my collection of road stuff.  The ABBs didn't always follow the auto trails or, later, the signed numbered routes -- they were independent, and followed the roads they judged to be best.  I'm pretty sure the Dabney-Osgood link was not part of the MR auto trail, and that it followed modern US 421 from where the "fork" north of Madison.  I just checked, and my 1916 and 1924 ABBs both send the driver down the same route as the 1918 ABB you linked.

I gave some consideration to routing the MR byway along the auto trails Meridian-30th route through Indianapolis, as it's a little tricky to navigate the West-MLK routing.  I chose the West-MLK route in the end because it is, to the best of my knowledge and research, the original route.

-Jim

[NE2]

http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/HIM&CISOPTR=279&CISOBOX=1&REC=8 (1874) labels MLK as Michigan Road down to 10th, and places "old line of north city limits" there. So that may be where the state-built road began.

[Michael in Philly]

Bear in mind that I needed to define a route that was driveable.  So I absolutely didn't call out the original routing through Napoleon, near Adams, and near Deer Creek -- because you can't drive them anymore, at least not continuously.  

PLEASE cut out photos when quoting unless directly relevant, thanks.

I have a couple Midwestern ABBs here in my collection of road stuff.  The ABBs didn't always follow the auto trails or, later, the signed numbered routes -- they were independent, and followed the roads they judged to be best.  I'm pretty sure the Dabney-Osgood link was not part of the MR auto trail, and that it followed modern US 421 from where the "fork" north of Madison.  I just checked, and my 1916 and 1924 ABBs both send the driver down the same route as the 1918 ABB you linked.

I gave some consideration to routing the MR byway along the auto trails Meridian-30th route through Indianapolis, as it's a little tricky to navigate the West-MLK routing.  I chose the West-MLK route in the end because it is, to the best of my knowledge and research, the original route.

-Jim

ABB?

[NE2]

Huge quote trees rule.

ABB?

Automobile Blue Book.

[mobilene]

http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/HIM&CISOPTR=279&CISOBOX=1&REC=8 (1874) labels MLK as Michigan Road down to 10th, and places "old line of north city limits" there. So that may be where the state-built road began.

You are probably right about that.  I hadn't found this map in my research, and it makes me feel a lot better about my choice of routing the byway over Washington to West.  -Jim