Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Odds and ends, including a map of the Jackson Highway

 The Greyhound bus schedule for bus service to Rensselaer can be found on the greyhound site. Going to Chicago the bus leaves at 6:10 AM with stops at Valparaiso and Gary. It arrives in Chicago at 8:25. Going to Indianapolis the bus departs at 11:50 with stops at Lafayette and Lebanon before arriving at Indianapolis at  3:00 pm. The bus stop is listed as 122 N Van Rensselaer, which is alongside Filson Park. I am not sure when the service starts.

The old Emmett Kannal house, aka the White House Bed and Breakfast, was sold in December. Emmett Kannal was a druggist who died about a year after finishing his house.

(Correction) The  Fendig Gallery has new hours: Tuesday noon to 4 pm and Thursday 2 pm to 4  6 pm.  The Thursday hours are shorter by two hours start later but end later.

The very cold water has produced some ice in the river. The picture here shows the ice on Wednesday. There was not appreciably more on Friday. The River is high enough to have swift current through Rensselaer so it has to be very cold for quite a while for it to freeze over.

Site preparation has begun for new tennis courts at Brookside Park. They will be on the north end of the soccer field.

On Tuesday morning the Jasper County Board of Finance met at the Court House. The Board consists of the three Commissioners and the County Treasurer. They approved minutes of last year's meeting, and adopted the same set of officers (Commissioner Maxwell is the president of the Board). They reviewed the 2021 investment report and because I did not have a copy, I could only follow bits and pieces of the discussion. Counties are very limited by the State in how they can invest funds. Much of the funds that the County had in 2021 were put in savings accounts or interest-earning checking accounts because those interest rates were higher than the rates on CDs. There were years in the past when the County earned $10 million on its funds. If I heard correctly, the County earned about 1% of that in 2021. If you have money in bank CDs, you understand why. The Board approved the same investment policy that they had approved last year.

On Friday morning the Tourism Commission met. They reviewed the inn-keepers tax, which was up considerably from 2020. The Tourism office is working on a farm trail for the County and has signed up six farms that want to take part in it. Tourism is a bit unsure what its role will be in the next Jasper Jaunt, which Rotary will be sponsoring. They heard a pitch to advertise with Travel Indiana but did not make a decision.

In 2019 I had a post on the Jackson Highway. Before highways got numbers in the mid 1920s, various travel routes were developed with names. Some of those names still remain; the Lincoln Highway went through northern Indiana. I recently found a map of the route that the Jackson Highway took between Chicago and Indianapolis. Much of it through Jasper County followed what is now US 231, but not all. Below is a map with a description of the route that I found in the May 8, 1919 issue of the Twice A Week Jasper County Democrat.




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