Lake County 1880

The University of Alabama has a couple of 1876 maps, but as they are at the state level, they are much less detailed than the county- and city-level maps I have already posted, so I omit them.

Let us pass over to 1880:


(Click on image to enlarge)

From Frank A. Gray, Indiana (Philadelphia: O.W. Gray; from The National Atlas, 1880), via the University of Alabama.

Alas, no Ainsworth on this map; no Grand Trunk Railroad, either, although both existed in 1880. The map must have been published early in 1880. Or Mr. Gray had an 1879 map and figured nothing much would change in a year out in a hick state like Indiana, so why go look for himself?

I'm kidding. No offense to Mr. Gray's memory intended.

* * *
Ainsworth is both quiet and surrounded by railroads, so you can hear the trains coming from a long distance on the Grand Trunk Railroad, and the whistles of the trains passing through downtown Hobart are so audible you sometimes mistake them for Grand Trunk trains.

I awoke at five o'clock this morning, looked at the clock, closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. The weather is windy and chilly enough to cool the house without my running window fans all night, so instead of their electric hum I heard only crickets and the rise and fall of the breeze — and far, far away, a train's whistle. (We still say "whistle" even though, these days, the noise is less flutish and more brassy, like a car's horn.) Then silence, whistle, whistle; silence, whistle, whistle, as the faraway train passed over crossings in succession, while I, thinking it a Grand Trunk train, sleepily tried to enumerate the crossings — if from the east, Union Street, County Line Road, Randolph Street; if from the west ... well, I'm too sleepy to remember the roads the train must cross. And then by fits and starts came the train's rumble, too low to be heard unless the wind rose and carried it. I lay waiting for the sound to grow louder, from that distant grumble to the ear-drowning roar as it passed through Ainsworth. But whistle, and whistle, and fitful rumble, and now the sound was moving across the world and coming from the other hemisphere, as the train moved through downtown Hobart, heading toward — Valparaiso? Who knows where those trains go?

As for me, I fell asleep again and dreamed my computer was all messed up by a virus. But it was only a dream.