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LaGrange County IN

• 06.20.08
  Cedar Lake
  LaGrange County IN (0)

  After crossing I-80 and the Fawn River, it wasn't far to Cedar Lake. The trees on the horizon to the right of the road are in the low ground around Cedar Lake. The trees on the horizon to the left are along a little creek that drains the area into the Fawn River. Cedar Lake was one of the places where settlers started to build a fort during the Black Hawk war, on account of a practical joke gone bad. Cedar Lake map The fort was supposedly built on an island in the lake, probably now covered by water due to ...
  
  
• 06.19.08
  Border crossings
  LaGrange County IN (0)

  Crossing the border from Michigan into Indiana is pretty much the same thing as crossing I-80 in some places. Looking back to the north, I can still see the I-80 traffic, but can barely hear it. The entire tone of the ride changes here -- it becomes very quiet and the world suddenly seems less constricted. I'm not sure the decibel level changes, but in some sense it's quiet. Looking south, there is a bridge over the Fawn River. In some places the Indiana roads don't quite line up with the Michigan ones. I'm ...
  
  
• 06.10.08
  Hawville
  Amish country, LaGrange County IN, Noble County IN (0)

  I've already written about the surprise of my first-ever ride to Topeka in LaGrange County, Indiana. This was the road by which I rode on that day in 1997. The above sign about "Life in the Past Lane" wasn't there back then. This is downtown Topeka, facing west (again). Just down the street and on the right is a gas station/convenience store where I usually fuel up with a Subway BLT. I had timed my arrival in Topeka for a noon lunchtime break. Topeka has a town marshall. (I also see that I took a photo of myself in the window.) I ...
  
  
• 06.09.08
  Mistaken memory
  LaGrange County IN (0)

  Last week, in telling about the previous Sunday's ride, I explained how after taking a mile of gravel road, I came to a place where I decided to continue on gravel instead of taking the paved road. Here's the intersection where I made that decision. Except I remembered it wrong. I didn't take the gravel road; I took the paved one instead. A few days after I wrote about it, I was tracing my route on a map and just couldn't find a place where I would have gone an extra mile on gravel. Then ...
  
  
• 06.08.08
  David Rogers, land speculator
  LaGrange County IN (0)

  Douglas Hurt writes about land speculators in "The Ohio Frontier" (1996). Smaller property owners resented the land speculators, not because they owned more land than everyone else, but because they didn't pay much in taxes. If they were required to pay taxes at the same rate as others, they would have to sell their parcels to smaller landowners who would then develop it, mostly to make farms out of it. And (though it hasn't been mentioned by Hurt so far in my reading) the land would then get improved, which would raise property values for everyone. ...
  
  

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