Maps! All Kinds of Lake County Maps!

Local historian Michael White has shared with me his "pathfinder bibliography of maps of Lake County, Indiana, that are digitized and available online to view for free." In it he has pulled together links to a variety of online historical paper maps (digitized, of course) as well as different ways of viewing the contemporary landscape — including LiDAR!

This is a great resource for historians. I am linking it below and will link it permanently on my Pages sidebar.

Lake County Maps Pathfinder Bibliography

Lake County 1852

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From S.D. King, Map of the state of Indiana compiled from the United States surveys by S. D. King, Washington City; exhibiting the sections & fractional sections; the situation & boundaries of counties; the location of cities villages & post offices canals, rail roads and other internal improvements, carefully laid down (New York, 1852), via the Library of Congress American Memory Collection.

For my purposes, the Library of Congress collection of Indiana maps is not a resource on par with the University of Alabama collection, but it has a few interesting ones.

On the one excerpted above, I particularly liked the mapmaker's descriptions. South of the Lake Michigan shoreline and following its contour, he wrote: "Marshy Pine Timber and Sand Hills." Along the Calumic River, just north of Liverpool: "Impassable Morass." To the southeast of that, "Lake George/Water from 1 to 8 feet deep." To the east, "Twenty Mile Prairie"; further south, "Rolling Prairie." At the bottom of this part, "Deep Marsh & Timber Islands."

No particular description for the Ainsworth area, however, and no sign of an Ainsworth community.

Plat Book 1939: Ainsworth

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From Lake County Title Co., Plat Book of Lake County 1939.

I attended an auction this morning, just down Ainsworth Road (8842, to be exact). I hadn't been to an auction since I was 18 years old, when my mother and I bought a rocking chair at an estate sale in Munster, Indiana.

Today I bid on only one thing, the plat book extracted above. There were other things that interested me — the 1949 telephone directory, for example — but I did not bid on them. I feel like an alcoholic who has stopped at one drink!

Here, then, is who owned where in Ainsworth in 1939; or least, that's what it purports to be. I just have one question: where is (the present-day) Route 30? It's clear enough on those 1939 aerial photos.

Also: what's with that "Watershed Line" south of Lincoln Highway? This is not something I can say I've ever noticed in the landscape in my 19 years here, and yet the mapmaker seems to be perfectly sure of it.

Leaving aside those questions, I'm looking at the property where my house stands now (and stood then) and seeing a name I didn't expect.

According to the key in the upper right that my scanner cut off, Ainsworth Road was a gravel road at this time.

There is no key to tell me what is meant by that dotted circle by the name "Ainsworth," nor that smaller black circle on the southeast side of the dotted one.

Interesting, huh? That's $30 down the drain.

Lake County 1920

Northern Lake County

Southern Lake County

From Goodrich Travel and Transport Bureau - B.F.G.R. Company, Goodrich Road Map of Indiana (Akron, Ohio: Beck Raymond Commercial Print and Lithograph Company, c.1920), via the University of Alabama.

This map is disorienting. Ainsworth rates the same size typeface as Merrillville and Hobart. Grand Boulevard appears to have a significant east-west jog in it. The greater part of Ainsworth Road has simply disappeared.

But don't you just love the way the whole thing looks? Doesn't the whole style just say "1920s"?

Here endeth my University of Alabama adventure. The last Indiana map they have, 1940, is some kind of topographical or geological thing and not pertinent to this blog. Great site, though, and I am much obliged to the Alabamians.

Lake County 1908

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From Rand McNally, Indiana (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1908), via the U. of Alabama.

And here we have a new neighbor — Gary, founded 1906.

Hammond rates awfully large typeface, doesn't it?

What has become of Redesdale since the 1883 map? Starting with an 1885 map I didn't post, Redesdale vanished, and the Grand Trunk Railroad's next stop west of Ainsworth is Lottaville. Redesdale makes one brief reappearance on an 1888 map and then is seen no more. Whether Redesdale changed its name to Lottaville, or the railroad moved the station, I don't know. No map that I've found shows both of them. I haven't been able to find anything out about Lottaville except that it's now a neighborhood in Merrillville, and as for Redesdale, try Googling it and see what you get — a whole lotta (heh!) nuthin'.

* * *ETA (9/26/09): Redesdale (or Riedesdale) adopted the name Lottaville when the post office opened there in 1881. Source: Bob Burns, "'Populous Indian village' evolved into Merrillville," Post Tribune (IN), Apr. 30, 2006.

Lake County 1893

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From Rand McNally & Co., Indiana (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1893; from Rand McNally & Co.'s Universal Atlas of the World), via the University of Alabama.

Now that the suspense is ended and Ainsworth has arrived, these maps are getting repetitive, so I will skip over some of the Lake County extracts in my photo set and even more maps on the U. of A. website. If you want to see them, you can go and look at them, you and your high-speed internet connection.

* * *
The Indiana Commission on Public Records has sent me aerial photos of Ainsworth and Deep River from 1958, 1965 and 1973, but the promised digital file on CD was not included in the package. I will have to ask them about that. I will scan the photos only as a last resort, because I'm sure the direct-from-CD version would be better quality.

Lake County 1883

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From George F. Cram, Indiana (Chicago: George F. Cram, c.1883), via the University of Alabama.

And there it is — Ainsworth! And there is the Grand Trunk Railroad — or, as Mr. Cram has it, the "Chicago & G'd Trunk R.R." There are the next station-stops, Redesdale to the west and Sedley to the east, both now as imperceptible as Ainsworth.

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:


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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.

Lake County 1873

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No Ainsworth. The "Calumet" River is here given as "Calumic," a spelling that shows up occasionally on old maps. A variant transcription of the Indian name for that river? White people couldn't make up their minds what to call it? — I don't know.

Boring entry, but I feel like crap today.

Just to make up for this stupid entry, here's a pretty picture of some clouds after the storm the other day (click on image to enlarge):

Lake County 1870 (northern half)

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Via the U. of Alabama, from Alvin J. Johnson, Johnson's Indiana (New York: A.J. Johnson, c.1870).

Merrillville is still "Merrittsville." No Ainsworth, at least not in Indiana. There is one just over the border in Illinois, along a railroad that may be either the Michigan Southern or the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago — hard to tell on this map. Those Ainsworths got around, didn't they?

Miller, but no Gary. Robertsdale, but no Whiting.

* * *
Freight trains still stop here in Ainsworth — when their own train-traffic reasons require it — occasionally blocking State Road 51. Sometimes they stop so quietly that if I'm inside the house and not paying attention I don't realize the train has stopped rather than just passed out of hearing. But presently the continual whoosh ... whoosh ... whoosh of cars down Ainsworth Road draws my notice, and a glance out the window confirms: stopped freight train. The cars are looking for a way around the train, and it's either make a U-turn and go back north on State Road 51, or turn east onto Ainsworth Road. Sometimes the train stops for 20 minutes, or more, while some drivers sit there — fuming, or listening to the radio, or shouting into their cellphones, "Hey, I'm going to be late — yeah, there's a damn freight train..." or just thinking about how their lives have turned out — and others drive around in unaccustomed routes or back roads they've known for years, looking for a clear crossing. So at least in that way the Grand Trunk Railroad still has a powerful effect here in the ghost of Ainsworth.

Lake County 1864 (northern half)

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Via U. of Alabama, from Alvin J. Johnson, Johnson's Indiana (New York: A.J. Johnson, c. 1864).

No Ainsworth. Merrillville given as "Merrittsville."

In the course of the American Civil War, Indiana furnished 196,363 soldiers, sailors and marines. Of those, 26,672 died, in battle, in prison, of disease, or from other causes. (Source)

Lake County casualties, from the Rev. T.H. Ball's Lake County, Indiana : from 1834 to 1872 (Chicago: J.W. Goodspeed, 1873), as transcribed at Genealogy Trails.

Lake County 1856(?)

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Via U. of Alabama, from Colton, J.H., Colton's Indiana (New York: J.H. Colton, 1856).

This map shows the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad running at least through Valparaiso, and yet The History of Porter County, Indiana (Chicago: F.A. Battey & Co., 1882), as excerpted here, states that said railroad "was laid through Porter County in 1858."

The U. of Alabama may be mistaken about the publication date. Here, the publication date is given as 1859. I leave it to someone with a better-than-dial-up connection to try to figure out if those are the same maps. I don't really care, because Ainsworth doesn't show up on this map, and, of course, the Grand Trunk Railroad is about two decades in the future.

Just to add to the confusion, there were two different Coltons (J.H. and G.W.) making maps of Indiana in the 19th century.

Lake County 1837

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This map comes, via the U. of Alabama website, from J.H. Young, The Tourist's Pocket Map of the State of Indiana, Exhibiting its Internal Improvements, Road Distances, etc. (Philadelphia, S. Augustus Mitchell, 1837).

The map shows Lake County as a vast emptiness containing only rivers, but Lake County was formally organized February 15, 1837. There were hundreds of people living in the county, and Crown Point, for example, was settled in 1835. These may have been squatters on government-owned land; perhaps that was Mr. Young's problem, or maybe he just ran short of ink.

On this map Lake County's southern boundary is not, as at present, the Kankakee River.

Over the counties south of Lake appears the legend "Country Ceded by the Pottawatomies."

I have nothing further to say. You're lucky I said this much. This is one of those days where all I want to do is sleep.

Lake County 1822

The University of Alabama has an interesting collection of historical maps of Indiana.

For purposes of this blog I have extracted Lake County from some of those maps, since we don't care about the rest of Indiana, now, do we?

And so, without further ado, allow me to present Lake County as it appeared in the Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Map of Indiana by Lucas Fielding, Jr., published in 1822:



River Styx? I don't believe that for a minute.

More historical maps to come.

Lake County 1876

I have a single page from an atlas published in 1876. One side shows Lake County, the other side Porter County. I have scanned the Lake County side. It wouldn't all fit on the platen so I had to scan it in pieces.

Here is northern Lake County, including the Ainsworth area, which is not marked except for the little house icon I referred to in an earlier post and which I don't know the meaning of and I'm not going to pay $16.00 plus S&H on Amazon.com to buy a reproduction of this atlas in order to find out. Note the absence of the Grand Trunk Railroad. This part of the map includes a street map of Lowell.

Southern Lake County, not that anybody cares.

Street map of Hobart.

Street map of Crown Point.

Source: Baskin, Forster & Co., Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Indiana (Chicago, 1876).