3405 Lincoln Highway, New Haven at Fleetwood Avenue, Street View photo from Google Maps In the 1930s photo above the dirt street Fleetwood Avenue is almost not recognized as a street except there is an automoblile on either side of the main dirt road New Haven Avenue also part of the Lincoln Highway which was also dirt roads when it was first designated as a highway. The gray house on the right is the same unpainted house in the 1930s. The houses on the left in the 1930s have been removed in the current photo and are not found in online Google photos back to October 2007 either.
Indiana’s first stagecoach route was established along Buffalo Trace (Vincennes Trace) between New Albany and Vincennes in 1820. In the 1830s, the Michigan Road (U.S. 421), Indiana’s north-south connecting route between Madison (Ohio River) and Michigan City (Lake Michigan), and the east-west National Road (U.S. 40), America’s first federally funded road, were constructed. In 1913 the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 30) was dedicated, becoming America’s first transcontinental highway. Indiana’s first interstate, State Road 420 (I-80/I-94) opened in 1952. A few years later the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 created a national interstate highway system, leading to the construction of interstates such as I-74, I-465, I-65, and I-70. By this year, 97% of Hoosier households owned at least one automobile. Copied from a July 27, 2022 post by Indiana Department of Natural Resources on Facebook.
Our Highway Commission collection keeps surprising us with interesting finds!
These photographs display what's possibly a road painter vehicle from the 1930s.
A comment to the original post included a newspaper article showing this vehicle: Painting the center lines on Indiana's highways from The Waterloo Press, Waterloo, Indiana, Thursday, Dec 22, 1938, Page 8
Since early 19th century Indiana state law required males aged 18 to 50 to open and maintain public roads, it follows they would claim the road as theirs by naming it after their family labor which is why many local roads are named after the pioneer families that first settled on land bought from the United States government.
A law of 1816-17 required males age 18-50 to donate up to 6 days labor annually to open and maintain public roads. The federal government built the National Road in Indiana from 1829 to 1834. It is now U.S. 40. The Internal Improvements Act of 1836 was the state's over-ambitious attempt to address transportation needs of Hoosiers, especially for commerce and trade. Eight major projects were specified. The law resulted in financial disaster, and construction was stopped in 1839. Many projects were later completed with public and private funding. Indiana, Crossroads of America, has thirteen interstate highways--more than any other state--with a total of 1,138 miles. Copied from the Transportation page at Introducing Indiana-Past and Presentwebpage, and Introducing Indiana-Past and Present pdf both at IN.gov.
Traveling around Allen County and Northeastern Indiana in the early 19th century was difficult. One of the major reasons was that our portion of the state was at the western edge of the Great Black Swamp, which made roads virtually impassable. One of the solutions was the construction of plank roads. In 1847, the Fort Wayne and Lima Plank Road Company, headed by Samuel Hanna, developed Lima Road into the first plank road in northern Indiana. A plank road is constructed of a series of wooden planks laid next to each other, providing a surface over which wagons could travel in all weather conditions. When it was completed, the Lima Plank Road reached Sturgis, Michigan, a distance of 60 miles. The planks for the road were three inches thick and eight feet long. These pieces of oak are from a plank on the original Lima Plank Road, which went from Fort Wayne to Lima, now Howe, Indiana in LaGrange County. The oak plank was excavated north of LaOtto during road construction. #sociallyhistory
Our crews work hard to take care of our roads and fix things when problems come up. Here's a close up look at crews spot paving on U.S. 27 in Fort Wayne Wednesday. http://511in.org
Our crews work hard to take care of our roads and fix things when problems come up. Here's a close up look at crews spot paving on U.S. 27 in Fort Wayne Wednesday. http://511in.org
Hoosier motorists had hopes for easier traveling on this day in 1919. The newly organized state highway commission was...
Hoosier motorists had hopes for easier traveling on this day in 1919 [July 27]. The newly organized state highway commission [INDOT] was busy laying out our present system of state highways. At the time, only a few stretches of highways were paved. Most were covered with gravel or crushed stone. The commission also began numbering highway routes. You had to look quickly to see if you were on the right road, though, as the route numbers were simply painted on white bands on telephone poles.
