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Transportation
Transportation has played a key part in the development of Carroll County over the last century and a half. Initially, water was the medium of transport as Carroll County is blessed with a major river and a number of navigable streams. The interior of the State of Indiana being wilderness in the early 1800s was only accessible by following these waterways with various types of wooden boats. Indiana, whose statehood was achieved in 1816, was settled from South to North by river connection. Early settlers to Carroll County used flat-bottomed self-constructed boats to travel up the Wabash River from Vincennes through Crawfordsville where the regional public land office was located to a suitable homestead. The pioneer settlers were always looking for a homestead point that was a distance up a smaller stream or river from the main influence of the Wabash to be out of the reach of springtime river flooding. Furthermore the tributary stream was checked for adequate water level fall to support the installation of a mill to process their agriculture products for marketing. In Carroll County, they found such a place on Deer Creek just a mile or so from the mighty Wabash. Here the Robinson and Baum families settled. As the settlement grew, and was still subject to low land flooding from Deer Creek, General Samuel Milroy plotted a town just northwest on higher ground. This settlement, Delphi, became the new seat of government as Carroll County was formed in 1828. Knowing that moving agricultural products to market and finished goods to the settlers was an important part of the economic development of the new State of Indiana, a state wide Internal Improvements Act was enacted by the State Legislators that called for the construction of plank roads, canals and a newly discovered innovation called railroads. In one giant leap (later to cost Indiana dearly and bankrupt the state) many improvements were started. In the Carroll County area word spread quickly about a long canal that would stretch clear across Indiana with a summit and portage at Fort Wayne, a small settlement in North East Indiana loosely following the Wabash River. This canal, to become the Wabash and Erie in name, would stretch from Toledo, Ohio on the Great Lakes to Evansville, Indiana on the mighty Ohio River a distance of 468 miles. This was to become the longest canal in the western hemisphere. The canal, started in 1832 reached Delphi by 1840 and on to Lafayette and parts south. Starting in 1843, you could actually travel by water conveyance from Lafayette to New York City. The canal's heyday was short as close behind time wise was an all weather faster method known as the steam railroads. The canal did start the large-scale economic development of Indiana for future generations and started the label "Crossroads of America". The railroads chief advantage was the ability to operate all year round at a faster speed than the canal boats. Therefore the canal was soon relegated to slow transportation for large bulky items and the generation of waterpower for the still numerous mills grinding feed and flour. The first railroad through Delphi in 1856 was the Toledo St. Louis and Western soon to be known as the Wabash Railroad followed by the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville (Monon) in 1882.
The Wabash RR almost exactly paralleled the Wabash and Erie Canal, at least from Lafayette to Toledo and thus was a chief competitor that forced the Canal to reduce freight rates to an unprofitable minimum. The passengers after first overcoming their fears (promoted by the medical profession) of body injury by moving at speeds as fast as 30 miles per hour quickly found out how much time they saved on the longer trips. This was compared to the leisurely pace on the canal of 4 miles per hour. The quest for travel speed had begun and we have never looked back. In the early years of the twentieth century, the Wabash RR was known for their fast passenger trains including the famous Wabash Cannonball, a fast steam locomotive powered passenger train serenaded in song and legend. The Monon RR (Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville) however grew from the consolidation of several smaller railroads all in different locations of the state including a local Delphi businessmen effort to reach Chicago, Illinois in the middle 1860s. This effort, the Indianapolis, Delphi & Chicago was stillborn several times before being successfully built as the Indianapolis & Chicago Airline from Delphi northwest to Dyer, Indiana (close to Chicago) in 1881. Later in 1881 and early 82 it was consolidated into the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago which completed the line southward to Indianapolis. The LNA&C became the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville in 1897. Delphi now had good railroad connections north, south, east and west. The Wabash and Erie Canal failed just south of Delphi at the Deer Creek Dam and towpath crossing in 1874, which forever stopped travel from Delphi by water to other far off eastern destinations.
The railroads enjoyed a number of years of competition free transportation in the late 1800s due to the poor conditions of the early roads. Prior to the automobile in the early 1920s, most local roads were un-improved rutted paths between the population centers only existing for the transportation of agricultural products during the harvest season. The remainder of the year especially when spring rains came, they were almost impassable even with a strong horse or mule. A few roads were constructed out of planks cut from deforesting the land for settlement but these generally were toll roads with an assessment to pay for the ongoing maintenance.
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