A few miles after SR 67 (here concurrent with US 231) leaves Spencer, the road comes upon a place where a curve was smoothed out. I’m betting this was an early improvement of the road, given that the remnants of the former curve are barely present anymore. I’ve drawn the approximate location of the original curve in blue.
Where this smoothed-out curve ends, a long and driveable old alignment of SR 67 begins. But a later driveable old alignment of SR 67 exists here as well! The oldest alignment is in blue below, and the newer alignment is in red.
Google Maps calls the blue alignment CR 255 N at its beginning, but on the ground it’s signed Dunn Road. It’s a gravel road that passes through farm country and a number of homes. It looks like this.
Just before it meets current SR 67, it passes under a railroad overpass. Here’s that view northbound.
From here, we just drove the newer alignment northbound. For the most part it resembles Dunn Road, but one part of it looks like this. There was no place for an oncoming car to pass.
500 yards from the south end of these two alignments, another original alignment begins. It’s signed as Strouse Road today, and it leads right to the small town of Freedom.
Just for comparison’s sake, here’s what the current alignment of SR 67 looks like northeast of Freedom.
Here’s what Strouse Road looks like.
There isn’t much to Freedom but a smattering of houses. I kind of wish I had photographed it now.
Just south of Freedom, the next old alignment begins. It’s Abrell Road, also known as CR 550 W/CR 770 S.
Here’s the beginning of this stretch, southbound. This hasn’t been SR 67 in a very long time.
It feels incredibly remote out here.
Just before we exited this alignment, we came upon this lonely chimney surrounded with rubble from what used to be a house.
The final original alignment in Owen County is 700 yards past the end of the Abrell Road alignment. It passes through a dot on the map called Farmers and is signed as Farmers Road.
This is also a narrow and lightly maintained road.
It passes by this cemetery. This is probably the extent of what was once Farmers.
Next: Entering Greene County, finding a right-of-way marker on an original alignment, and a missing bridge.
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