I used this photo in a talk I gave for the Delton Area Rotary Club this Thursday morning. My friend Wes Knollenberg had invited me. We’ve known each other since at least 1981, but don’t see a lot of each other, and especially not in the last several years.
The photo is from Fulton County, Indiana. This is an east-west road that makes a jog here (and in many other such places) because the survey of the Michigan Road lands didn’t quite line up with the survey of the rest of the land after it was ceded to the United States by the Potawatomi people a few years later.
Wes and I talked afterwards. He is not a bicycler, but it was gratifying that he saw a lot of the same potential in these places that I do. I’ve never before had anyone spontaneously bring up so many of the points that I’ve thought about. One is that to make an area a place for bicycle tourism, you need destinations. The above photo is of a destination — if one is aware of the historical significance. There are places like that all around us — unremarkable places out in the country that, once you understand why the road turns here and not there, are worth riding out to take a look. For me, a little bend in the road like this is worth a day’s bike ride all by itself (though I often try to hit several such places in one day). Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the world who enjoys things like that, but thanks to Wes, I know it’s not such a strange concept after all.
Wes made a number of other points, which I may bring up in other blog articles.
Late edit: Here is a google map showing where the above jog in the road is located.
One can see that there are such jogs in the east-west roads in many places near old US-31, which was the Michigan Road. Each “offset” is about a mile long, corresponding to one edge of the square miles that were ceded by the Potawatomi people and sold to pay for the construction of the road.
