On my first ride to Bridgeton, Indiana, in September 2006, I rode in from the northeast. We had camped the night before at the Racoon Lake State Recreation Area. I wanted some photos to go with the story of Isaac McCoy’s Baptist Indian Mission here, from the late 18teens. I had little idea of what I’d find, so stopped here at this old iron bridge to take photos, thinking this might be the most photogenic thing I’d find that could go with the story. It turned out that there was a lot more to take photos of: A historic marker for the 1809 treaty line, a piece of road that followed the treaty line, the mill, and a covered bridge that was being rebuilt after having been burned by arsonists. And those other things were closer to the site of McCoy’s mission than this bridge, although I didn’t figure that out until some time later.

I was just now reading a description of the Big Raccoon Creek as it was at the time of the earliest European-American settlement. It made me wish I had taken better photos to accompany it. But maybe the above two give an idea. The description is in the 1880 History of Parke, on pages 6-7:

Sugar creek, through its upper course, ran, then as now, between bold and rocky bluffs, but no other creek in the county was anything like it is now. They consisted rather of long deep ponds connected by shallow ripples; and Big Raccoon, through much of its lower course, had no defined channel. Beaver dams and immense drifts obstructed its course, and for miles in a place the stream extended almost from bluff to bluff–a long swamp with a slow current. Indeed, as late as 1850, many of the creeks in the county had a more uniform volume of water in summer than now, and contained many long, deep pools joined by ripples… None of the streams rose so suddenly or so high as now, and none fell so low in the summer. … The rainfall of the year has not decreased, but it was then more evenly distributed in time. The further change is accounted for by the clearing of the land and draining of the swamps, allowing the falling rains to discharge more rapidly. Such were a few of the features of this county a hundred years ago.