February pictures and meetings 2023

Construction and demolition

The installation of drainage tiles around the courthouse was finishing up on Tuesday. Below is a picture from Friday. 

A picure from Satuday shows the remains of sidewalks ready to be hauled away.

On Saturday I took this picture of a pile of dirt on the southwest side of the Courthouse. What interested me were all the bricks in the pile. I suspect they were from the Courthouse that was on the site before the current Courthouse was built in the 1890s.

On Monday the last stretch of trench had been dug. Notice that the downspouts of the Courthouse are tied into the pipe. Too much water from the roof was causing the water leakage into the basement of the Courthouse and this project, by taking that water away from the Courthouse, is meant to solve the problem.

On Tuesday all the trenches had been filled and the last pile of dirt was being put into a dump truck 

   

It will take a while for the grass to grow back to what it was before this project.

Across SR 114 from the Fairgrounds the site for the new EMS building is being prepared. You can see Airport buildings and community Corrections in the background.

Last week workers were working along Owen Street installing a new sewer line.

Do you recognize where this is? Until recently there was a house and trees on this lot. It looked completely different in June.

For no special reason, another picture taken Sunday of lift station construction.

The demolishers working at the power plant filled this dumpster with scrap metal and hauled it away. There is now an empty one in its place. 

BPW 2-13-23

The Rensselaer Board of Public Works met on Monday with an unusually long agenda. It approved an update of the pursuit policy for the Police Department. It was a policy that the State introduced to bring uniformity among police departments and will not result in changes in the way the Rensselaer Department conducts pursuits. The Board also approved a promotion in the Police Department.

The Board then approved two task orders for Commonwealth Engineering. The first was for chemical phosphorus removal. This was required by IDEM and will cost $72,000. The second was for wastewater asset management and is a study needed to get funds from the Indiana State Revolving Fund (SRF). It was for $59,800.

The Board then approved the bid recommendations for the water project. (The bids were opened at a special January meeting.) The bid for the water-tower part of the project of $4,341.000 that includes the base bid and several of the alternates was approved, as was the bid of $2,202,865 for the water mains base bid and one of the alternates. The approval was contingent on SRF approval. It was noted that the bids were higher than the estimates, but pretty much everything is coming in on the high side.

The Board approved pay request #9 of $566,723.95 from Thieneman for the lift station construction and also $25,669.90 to Commonwealth for monitoring the construction. Commonwealth also had an invoice of $34,995.12 for the final design of the elevated storage project and for $5,315.24 for bid assistance for that project.

City Council meeting 

The City Council meeting lasted more than an hour, which is unusually long for these meetings. First up was a citizen who was upset with the sewer extension. She maintained that the new sewer hookup would cost her rather than save her money. She will now have to pay a sewer bill and it will cost about $3500 to connect her house to the sewer line. Her septic system was cheaper.

Next up was an ordinance authorizing the City to issue revenue bonds for the waterworks improvement project. The funding will be from the SRF and $2 million will be a forgivable loan (so a grant) and another $5.9 million will have an interest rate of zero percent. Because the closing is scheduled for the 24th, the Council passed the second reading and then passed the third reading of the ordinance. (The first reading had been passed at the previous meeting and this type of ordinance requires three separate votes.)

The process of annexing SJC began at this meeting. There are multiple steps, including a public hearing (scheduled for March 27) and the preparation of a fiscal plan. If all goes as planned, the annexation will be finished in June.

The Council approved an amendment to the salary ordinance affecting the assistant street superintendent. The gas tracker for February will reflect a 5.25¢ increase per hundred cubic feet. There was a presentation of the status of the comprehensive plan that used the same power-point slides as those used at the Plan Commission meeting on the 9th. The presenter noted that the organization of the plan might seem a bit confusing but this organization was used to make it easy for OCRA to review it. 

Two employees were recognized for ten years of service. Two requests for public relations funds, one for flowers for the funeral of an employee's wife, were approved. April 22 will be electronics recycling day, from 8:00 until noon.

Tourism Board meeting

The Tourism Board met on Valentine's Day at the Sparling Annex. Art week will be July 24-28 and the focus for murals will be Wheatfield. The walls that can be painted are more clustered than in DeMotte and that will give the event a more festival feel for the artists.

There was a funding request for a new horse barn at the Fairgrounds. In addition to use for the County Fair, the horse grounds are used for 18 booked events, most of which bring in outsiders to the Fairgrounds. The planned barn will be 62' by 80'. The Board was receptive but wanted to know what other sources of funds will be used because they do not want to approve funding and not have the building completed. It will probably be on the agenda for the March 14 meeting.

A citizen who would like to see one of the miniature trains manufactured in Rensselaer many years ago installed in a park wanted to know if that sort of project could receive Tourism funding. He was told it could. Time will tell if anything develops from this.

Airport Authority Board meeting

The most interesting item from the Airport Authority Board meeting was a discussion with a company called American Crop Care that would like to base its operations at the Jasper County Airport. The company is incorporated in Florida but its main pilot who also seems to be one of the owners lives in Winamac. The company is new and is in the crop dusting business. That business is seasonal and they plan to rent a plane for the crop dusting season and would like to rent a hangar or two for that season. This is new territory for the airport and the Board members had questions about insurance, storage of chemicals, and fuel sales. The company and the airport manager will try to work out a mutually beneficial agreement that can be approved at or before the next meeting.

The Airport has invested their funds in several allowable instruments, all of which are getting about 4% interest. They declared their courtesy car as surplus and will put it in the next County auction. They also discussed a variety of things that needed repairs or replacement and other airport issues that are important to the airport but are not of much public interest.

A few more pictures

Last week I wrote about the Plan Commission and a variance for D-1 Towing. Below is the lot on Walnut Street that they have been using for towed vehicles.

Below you can see the lots that they recently purchased. There were several trucks already on them. In the distance and on the right you can perhaps see the lot shown above.

Backroad Blooms is now open in the former GRG Auto Repair building at 312 South College.  (That is the same address as Rural Bling but Backyard Blooms has the north door.)

For more information, see the website is here and the Facebook page is here.

A very long time ago

Earlier this week I was invited to view some prehistoric earthworks located on a private property in Jasper County. They are on a sand ridge that until recently was overgrown with trees and underbrush. The owner of the property has spent many years collecting Indian artifacts and his knowledge of the prehistoric residents of our area was key to his recognizing the significance of what was on his property.

If I had walked alone through his property, I might have noticed that the landscape was unusual, with a number of circular pits and small mounds. It is very unlikely that I would have thought that these features could have been made many centuries ago. Below is a picture I took but it is impossible to capture the patterns that are visible when a person is actually there.

Indiana has other, similar prehistoric earthworks. Perhaps the best known is Mounds State Park near Anderson. (See also here.) The largest earthworks structure there is bigger than any that are on the Jasper County property, but it has a similar shape and design. It is round and on one side the lip of the circle is lower than the rest of the lip. There is a raised platform in the center. This kind of structure seems to be called a henge. There are at least six of them at the Jasper County site. They were probably built by people of the Adena culture more than 2000 years ago.

The owner of the property has shown them to archaeologists from Purdue and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Both were impressed and said that this is an important archeological site. One of the archaeologists would like to survey and map it with specialized equipment, but that equipment was loaned out and not currently available. Good maps would make interpretation of the site much easier. Even though the site has not been disturbed by farming, many centuries of erosion have blurred the features. One must use imagination to picture what was here when the site was in use.

What archeologists know about the people who made these structures is very limited. The tools and artifacts that were left by the inhabitants of Indiana 2000 years ago were considerably different from the tools and artifacts of the inhabitants of Indiana when Columbus stumbled on the Americas. Think of how little we would know of the Greeks and Romans if they had not left written records. Tools and other artifacts are not good substitutes for written records.

The owner of the land has not dug for any Indian artifacts, but he has used a metal detector to search the site for items left by early European settlers. He has found many nails, mostly from horse shoes, bullets, shell casings, and even part of a gun. Below is about one half of the metal artifacts he has found.

Judging from the tremendous number of Indian artifacts that have been found in Jasper County, this area had substantial populations before European settlement. Further, this area was probably inhabited since the glaciers retreated from Indiana at the end of the last Ice Age about 15,000 years ago. For information about Indian tribes in Indiana when European settlement occurred, see here.

Over the years I have had a number of posts about Indian artifacts (the best one is here and for others search the blog for "Indian artifacts") and I have bemoaned the fact that there is not more recognition of the people who lived here for thousands of years before European settlement. The owner of this site would like to find a way to give some public access to these earthworks. Perhaps it can eventually become something that will give recognition to our area's prehistory.

A curmudgeon's look at the interstate intersection

A couple weeks ago I took a close look at the intersection of I-65 and SR 114 and I was not impressed. At the eastern end, quite a distance from the interchange itself, are three buildings, the Dairy Queen, an empty building that has housed a number of restaurants over the years, and the Knights Inn.

Over the little creek west of the Dairy Queen is a large, ugly parking lot with a tall, blank sign. The sign suggests that there was once something here, but I have vague and confused recollections of something here once. Was there ever anything in here?

On the south side of SR 114 there is nothing for more than a fifth of a mile. When I came to town, there was a burger place called Burger Chalet owned by Wayne Erickson there, but it shut shortly after McDonald's opened up across the street. Interstate intersections are no place for eateries that are not part of chains or franchises--brand recognition is everything.

Looking at who owns what in the area, I noticed that GasAmerica owns about an acre in here. I wonder why they have not built.

(According to a rumor I recently heard, there are plans for a large gas station to open up in what is now the parking lot of McDonald's. But rumors of possible openings usually are wishful thinking.)

The widening of the road may be where the access to Burger Chalet once was.

Crossing over I-65 gets us to the biggest eyesore of the area, the abandoned Grandma's restaurant. The part of the roof where the shingles have come off seems to have been recently painted--I remember it used to look much worse.

Behind Grandma's the old diesel pumps remain, though they have lost their shells. (I thought stations had to remove these when they were no longer in use. What are the rules?) The repair building behind them also seems empty.

Driving through the parking lot of Trail Tree Inn on the southwest side of the intersection brings you to what was once Biggs Catfish farm. It has not been a catfish farm for quite a few years. SJC has some mammoth or mastodon bones that were found here--they are sometimes on display in the display cases by the SJC Theater.

We may no longer have a catfish farm, but Benton County now has a shrimp farm.

More abandoned signs and trash are visible from the parking lot.

The interchange has stagnated and other interchanges in the area have grown. But none of our eyesores compare to the shuttered hotel or motel on the SR 43/I-65 interchange just north of Lafayette.

(More rumors--Newton County apparently is having some financial problems because the use of the landfill is down. It is not that people have stopped throwing things away, but that trash from Chicago has found someplace cheaper and closer. The county was getting about a million dollars per month from tipping fees, but is now only getting 75% of that. And I also heard a good rumor--the landfill in White County may only have another ten years of life. However, with the money involved, I would not be surprised if the people in White County find a way to extend that landfill. When it closes, SR 114 will be almost empty.)

Wednesdays in the wild

Last Wednesday I attended the Wednesdays in the Wild program that was held at Fisher Oak Savanna. I am not sure who sponsors the Wednesdays in the Wild programs, but they are usually in the Lafayette area. About eight people showed up in addition to Brad, a NICHES stewardship manager. We walked a trail that I had not previously been on, one that goes out to an area of the preserve that was purchased only a few years ago.

The Fisher Oak Savanna is a great place for people who like native plants. If you do not care for native plants, there is not much there for you. I enjoyed the chance to have someone who knows a lot more than I do about plants answer questions.

There were several beautiful examples of cardinal flowers not too far from the parking lot.

There was a lot of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) blooming. This plant looks like a purple daisy with sloppy petals.

A closer look shows that what appear to be petals are actually the flowers. It is in the mint family. It is apparently quite easy to grow and often appears in flower gardens.

Out in the prairie section there were some blazing stars blooming. They stood out.

I would have never noticed this milkweed if it had not been pointed out. It is a blunt-leaf milkweed, or Asclepias amplexicaulis. Too bad it did not have flowers.

In the woods were a number of flowering plants that were new to me. Below is some kind of St. Johns wort.

This prairie flower that we found in the woods has a funny name: Monkey flower. Its Latin name is Mimulus ringens.

The flower below we also found in the woods, though its name is Meadow Beauty (Rhexia virginica).

On the way back we saw this flower, which looks a lot like a boneset. It is one of the Joe Pye weeds. (There are three different species and I do not know which of the three this one is.) I have been looking for this flower ever since I helped transplant seedlings of it for Nature Conservancy.

Here is a closer look.

In the back of the property was a yellow fringed orchid (Platanthera ciliaris). It is more common in the southeast than in our area.

The plant I was most surprised to see was a little patch of hemp or ditchweed (Cannabis sativa). I know that it grows in abundance in our area because it was grown for fiber production during World War II and has become invasive, but in all the years of living in Rensselaer, and that includes a number of years in which I jogged most of the roads within four or five miles of town, I had never seen it in the wild. Fifteen or twenty years ago there used to be frequent articles in the paper this time of the year about arrests of people harvesting it, but I have not seen any mention of that that lately.

I am told that the wild plants that grow here have little of the ingredients that make other varieties of this species a popular illegal drug.

One last thing I noticed was that ruins of the old potato field across the road, which was once an Obermyer farm, are more ruined than they were a couple years ago. This building, in particular, was standing a couple years ago.

I see from their newsletter that NICHES is in the process of acquiring another Jasper County Property, a ten-acre plot known as the Ranch half a mile south of the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. They describe it as a "black oak sand ridge and buttonbush slough."

Ruins east of town

A few months ago I ventured east of Rensselaer to photograph an old barn sign. On the way back I noticed ruins of an old windmill on the corner of SR 114 and the Marion School Road. I decided to investigate.

In the undergrowth was the foundation of what appeared to be a house. The bricks scattered over the site suggested that the house was either brick or had a brick facing.

The same foundation from a different angle.

Also on the site was some confusing stonework. This appears to have been a stone pillar or column, probably decorative.

There were stones arranged in rows in several places. It appears that when the house was occupied, there was a decorative garden around it. Stonework of that sort was quite popular a century ago--the best surviving example in Rensselaer is the grotto at SJC.

I was startled by this well, but then decided that it might have been part of the decorative garden, not a source of water.

The day lilies had not only survived but thrived. Day lilies mark the sites of many old dwelling places--in the end, they may outlast the stonework. They can be considered an invasive species.

I asked around a bit about this history of this place, which is kitty-corner to the old Marion School (now the Bethany Church.) Someone told me that they thought Frank Fisher once owned it, but did not know if he ever lived there. Someone who reads this probably knows the history of this place--please feel free to comment.

A few loose ends

The newspaper has had a couple stories about this house, which had a fire almost a year ago. Last week it re-burned, and this time it is a total loss. It was unoccupied, and arson is being given as the cause of the fire. It should be torn down, but that may be a problem with the owner not available.

I noticed that the old Chrysler dealership, which had been filled with cars from Ed White a few months ago, is totally empty and even the for sale signs are gone. Is something happening there?

South of town I found this impressive display of spring flowers. I doubt that the farmer who plants here is happy with it. I do not know what the plant is, but it seems to spread quite rapidly and probably is hard to eradicate.

Preparations for construction of the new elementary school continue on North Melville Street. There is now a port-a-potty, an essential element on any construction site, and the construction trailer, which arrived last week, is now in place.

Have a nice Holy Week and Easter.

Old windmill

Last fall I took a bike ride on Moody Road and found this picturesque structure along the way.

It looks a bit like an old well, but it is merely the remains of an old windmill

The pump underneath looks like it could still pump water if it were primed.

Coming back a bit further south I noticed these old gate posts, all that remains of an old fence. Was the fence taken down because the farm no longer had animals, or because modern farm equipment is too wide to pass though this gate?

Concrete markers very much like this still mark property lines throughout the countryside.