Crossing the line.
Today we rode from Coldwater Ohio to Muncie Indiana, crossing an important line along the way.
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The important line in question was not the Indiana/Ohio State line. We crossed into Indiana on a small farm road which had no "welcome to Indiana" sign. There was no obvious difference between the states at the state line, in fact we didn't even realize when we entered Indiana.
In retrospect, there were some general differences between Ohio and Indiana. It seemed to me that the towns on the Ohio side were more prosperous. The farms on the Indiana side seemed bigger, and for some reason few of the Indiana farm houses had grain silos. The smaller Ohio farms near Coldwater almost all had silos. Maybe that has something to do with consolidating family farms into larger and larger mega-farms.
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The important line was the 1795 Northwest treaty line. At the end of the 18th century American pioneers we're pouring into the Indian lands that would become Ohio and Indiana. The Indians began to push back. In 1791, president George Washington sent general Arthur St Clair on a mission to crush Indian resistance to American expansion in the Ohio River valley. In a November battle, 3/4 of St Clair's force was killed or wounded. A monument marks the site of the defeat.
Two years later, the Americans tried again. General Anthony Wayne built Fort Recovery at the sight of St Clair's defeat.
In 1794, general Wayne won the battle of Fort Recovery. The Indian defeat splintered the coalition of Indian nations that had been resisting American expansion. The treaty of 1795 made Fort Recovery the Northeast corner of the frontier. The territory Southeast of the Fort was ceaded to America.
The treaty line did nothing to slow the westward expansion of America. It's hard to comprehend just how fast the border was moving west. Nothing could stop people's desire for land. In the next couple of years settlers moved into Indiana, then Illinois. By 1803 the Louisiana purchase pushed the western border of the USA all the way to the Rocky mountains.
Ok, I've talked about the state line and the treaty line. Now I want to complain about one other line - the white line that is supposed to separate the car traffic lane from the shoulder where bikes can ride. As cyclists, we want to stay to the right of that line, out of the traffic lane. It drives us nuts when the highway department digs rumble strips into a perfectly good shoulder, forcing bikes out into the car traffic. This was the case for several miles along a stretch of Indiana rt 67 that had been recently resurfaced.
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1. Rumble strips save lives.
2. Bicyclist lives don't count.
I have never understood why the rumble strips are as wide as they normally are (6 inches should be plenty to wake someone up) and why they don't start right on the white line instead of 1/3 to 1/2 of the way in on the shoulder.
5 years ago