A SHARD OF GLASS A PIECE OF CAST

According to Waynedale historian, the late Ed Noble, Waynedale roads were originally blazed trails, cleared by the earliest military and used for the transport of supplies. The first improved road (receiving public funds) in Allen County was the Winchester Road, which was designed by Sam Hanna. Improved meant making a road wide enough for two wagons to pass, removing all the trees and brush and using plank foundations and fill where necessary.

On January 25, 1850, The Fort Wayne and Bluffton Plank Road was organized and named ‘The Fort Wayne Little River Turnpike Plank Road. It required a lot of fill on the high side of the Saint Mary’s River and had a tollbooth close to Quimby Village.

The tollbooth area has seen a lot of change over the past 158 years. Near the old plank road at the west end of the suspension bridge in Foster Park there have been some recent changes to the terrain. During the early spring rains a large sycamore tree was uprooted, destabilizing the hill and creating a large slump of eroded shoreline.

The new erosion has exposed an obvious disconformity about ten to fifteen feet down from the Bluffton Road. Erosion continues and there are now pieces of debris washing out from what may be road fill from 158 years ago or sooner.

I have found parts of an old shoe, pieces of canning jars, broken cast iron, a piece of flaked chirt with a crystalline inclusion and oxidized chunks of broken bottles.

I bicycle past the area almost every day and as I find new scraps of times gone by I place them on the cement drain abutment.

Each piece of history probably has a tale to tell, but only a vivid imagination could unscramble the long lost stories. A shard of glass a piece of cast from all those years ago.