In October, 2012, I followed the Dixie Highway (a.k.a. State Road 37) from Indianapolis to Paoli. I’m finally sharing my full report from that trip here.
Less than a half mile from the end of the previous segment, the next segment of Old State Road 37 and the Dixie Highway begins.
This 14½-mile old alignment runs through some gorgeous land that includes the 25,000-acre Morgan-Monroe State Forest. It’s a terrific pleasure drive, one I make nearly every time I visit Bloomington.
This road offers few places to pull over — typical of an old Indiana highway, there are no shoulders. But a small lake just south of the Morgan-Monroe State Forest entrance provides a convenient place to stop. I made a few photos here to capture the character of this great road.
The lake itself is not large, but is lovely. It’s a popular fishing hole. Sometimes so many fishers are parked here that there’s no place for my car.
Google’s Street View car has recorded this road; you can follow its length. Even though the images are from 2009 and 2013, it’s a good representation of its current state. If you follow it, you’ll see that south of the forest, widely spaced houses line the road all the way to Bloomington.
Backing up to the beginning of this segment, I’m curious about another road here and whether it could have ever been part of the Dixie Highway, State Road 37, or Original State Road 22. Old SR 37 is east (on the right) of I-69 in this image. The road in question starts out west of I-69 (on the left), dead ends at I-69, and picks up again on the other side until it merges with Old SR 37. The road is signed Turkey Track Road east of I-69, and Pine Blvd. west of I-69.
The oldest representation I could find of these roads was this 1939 aerial image from the Indiana Historical Aerial Photo Index (IHAPI). The current alignment of I-69 and SR 37 was years into the future. These roads clearly connected at both ends. I wonder whether Turkey Track Road is older, and the SR 37 alignment on the left was built later, perhaps as an improvement to the highway. It very much looks like it to me.
Sometime between 1946 and 1954, SR 37 was rebuilt on its current alignment to about 3½ miles north of Bloomington’s north edge. The road was improved to be a four-lane expressway sometime between 1967 and 1975, at which time those last few miles were moved to a more westerly route to create a western bypass of Bloomington. The original route of this alignmentw as renamed Business SR 37, but is now more commonly known as Walnut Street. From my 2007 trip, here’s where SR 37’s original alignment intersects with the later alignment.
These two alignments run in parallel the rest of the way to Bloomington. The original alignment of SR 37 ends at College Avenue, which runs one way south toward downtown. The next alignment of SR 37, Walnut Street, splits into two streets, College Avenue southbound and Walnut Street northbound.
I found this 1910 USGS topographical map that shows this road entering Bloomington on Walnut Street, with College Avenue dead ending before reaching this road. It seems likely that these roads retained this configuration in 1915 when the Dixie Highway was created.
The 1939 aerial image of Bloomington that I referenced earlier shows SR 37 splitting into College Avenue and Walnut Street. I’ve not found good sources that show when that split was created.
Next: The Dixie Highway and State Road 37 in Bloomington.
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