Railroad Pieces

The other fun thing I did on Saturday was drive a bit more of the road called Railroad Avenue in Oceana County. This is the dirt road on which the Pentwater Pathway trailhead is located.

The Chicago and West Michigan Railroad owned various lines at various times. One of them angled northeast from near Muskegon, and that is the part shown in the link below.

But one of their lines ran from New Buffalo (southwest corner of Michigan) to Pentwater. Now portions of that rail bed are roads, including a 5.3-mile stretch between Mears (where I was Saturday) and "sort of" Pentwater. The railroad ran to a settlement on the west side of Pentwater Lake called Frenchtown.

The parts I drove Saturday are roughly inside the red circle.

The access to Pentwater Pathway is almost at the north end of the line. There the road is dirt.

A little south of there the rail bed has been paved and is a road.

Right beside that section is this house. Can't you just imagine that when the rail line was operating (about 1869-1881) this was quite the beautiful place?

And this brings me to mention a category of blog posts that I never really started, but have thought about. Title: "Houses I'd Like to Save." The problem is that often I just see them while driving by and don't have the opportunity to stop and get a picture. I've only done one other post with this tag so far, but I see a lot of houses that would fit the category.

And this is frustrating. I have been in the house that was the station in Frenchtown. I've taken pictures of the railroad berm, and I was really sure I blogged about it. But I sure can't find the post-- on this blog or any other blog of mine! If I ever find the pictures, I'll have to do one.

A good day in terms of getting things done, although I did get off to a slow start.

See Chicago and West Michigan Railway

Super Quality Days

 
I was with friends Rick and Ellen until this morning. Ellen and I took a walk on the Pennsy Rail Trail which is very near her house. It's not continuous yet, but as I mentioned, we didn't need a long walk yesterday! It's a former route of the Pennsylvania RR, which also roughly parallels the National Road.



Today I drove to Ester's, and we did some of the things we love doing together. We went out exploring back roads. We looked at plants and trees and were momentarily stumped by a young buckeye tree. It may be an ornamental hybrid of some kind. It doesn't look quite right for the common one. But we like to try to figured out things like this.

Mostly we enjoyed old houses. All three of these are in a little town in Indiana called Wolcottville. It's really old! Founded in 1836. We don't know anything about the first two except that we hope they are saved. This one seems to have been worked on. It has a completely new roof, but it needs a lot of work. I know it's not fancy, but it appeals to me. I've sort of wanted to start an occasional feature called "houses I'd like to save." This one makes the list.



A lot of the buildings in that town were very old. Most of them had little architectural appeal, but they spoke to the fact that the road through that town must have been very important, early on. It seems to have been on a trail that went from Fort Wayne, IN, to White Pigeon, MI. But I haven't been able to find out much about that route yet.

This house is probably not as old, but it sure has character! I really hope this one gets fixed up. It appears to be empty but isn't in bad shape yet.



However, this was the gem! While trying to find out about the historic trail, we learned that George Wolcott, the founder of the town, built a Greek Revival style house in 1840. We went hunting for it, and we found it. It is being restored by his great-great-great grandson. And even better... see that little lump in the lawn in front of the central part? Legend said that was an Indian Mound, but the idea was mostly poo-poohed. But students from Ball State examined it with ground-penetrating radar and discovered it to be a ceremonial mound probably used more than 1000 years ago!




We also poked around the Kneipp Sanitarium in Rome City, Indiana. It was a resort for curative purposes, founded in 1895.



We also had ice cream, went to an Amish produce stand, and then brought take-out dinner back to her house. Fun, fun fun!