Читать книгу History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Volume 1 - Berry Robinson Sulgrove - Страница 6

Special Features of the City of Indianapolis — Area and Present Condition — General View and Historical Outline.

Special Features of the City. — The general contour of the surface of the city site and vicinity in Centre township is in no way different from that of the other parts of the county. It is level or gently undulating, except where the bluff's bordering the " bottoms" of streams make more abrupt elevations, and none of these are considerable. Following the eastern border of the valley of Pogue's Run, which divides the city from northeast to southwest, is a ridge, or range of swells rather than hills, from the extreme southwest corner to near the northeast corner, where it leaves the present city limits, and these are the only " high grounds" in the city. In improving the streets these little elevations have been cut down and the hollows filled, till in hardly any street can be discerned any change from a level, except a slight slope or depression. For the past thirty years or so, before any considerable improvements had been made on the natural condition of the site, several bayous, or "ravines," as they were generally called, traversed it through a greater or less extent, two being especially noticeable for volume and occasional mischief. They drained into the river the overflow of Fall Creek into a large tract of swampy ground northeast of the city, from which, at a very early period, a ditch was made by the State into Fall Creek at a point a mile or two farther down. The smaller or shorter of these ran through the eastern side, in a slightly southwesterly direction, crossing Washington Street at New Jersey, where the former, a part of the National road, crossed on a brick culvert, and terminating at Pogue's Creek. The other passed nearer the center of the city, turning west a little above the State-House Square, and passing along the line of Missouri Street, afterwards the line of the Central Canal, from near Market to Maryland, and thence curving southward and again westward and northward, entered the river at the site of the water-works, where some indications of its existence can still be seen, and about the only place where there is a relic of this once prominent and very troublesome feature of the city's topography. In several low places, mainly north and east of the center, there were considerable ponds, the drainage of heavy rainfalls, and in the south was one or two, but these have all been improved out of existence many a year. The only one of these that was perennial and distinguished by a name was the Graveyard Pond, near the old cemetery, formed by the retention of overflows of the river in a bayou following the bluff of the river bottom. The whole site of the city, both the original mile square and all the outlying " donations" and all the " additions," were at first densely covered with woods and weeds and underbrush, of which there remain only one or two trees in Pogue's Creek Valley in the east, and a few sycamores and elms near the creek mouth at the southwest corner. Fall Creek and Pleasant Run may be regarded as the northern and southern limits of the city now.

Divisions. — Pogue's Creek divides the city, leaving one-third or more on the southeast side, the remainder on the northwest side. The latter contains the bulk of the business and population. A small tract west of the river was added to the site selected on the east to compensate for a part of one of the four sections cut off by a bend of the river. This, called Indianola, forms part of one of the city wards. A still smaller area south of this, on the west side, has been added to the city, but the greater part of the tract west of the river and south of Oliver Avenue has been organized into an independent town government by the name of West Indianapolis. Northwest is another suburb, but not attached to the city, called Haughsville. Farther to the north is North Indianapolis, also independent, while northeast is Brightwood, unattached; and east, nearly five miles, is the handsome little town of Irvington, mainly occupied by residents whose business is in the city, and by the faculty and students of Butler University. Southeast is the little suburb of Stratford. A number of city additions have separate names, as Oak Hill, Brookside, Woodlawn, Woodruff Place, but none, except the last, is in any way distinguishable from the city adjacent to it.

The Creek. — More pertinently here than elsewhere may be noticed the connection of the two streams that enter the city, Pogue's Creek and the river, with its history. The former was named for the traditional but disputed first settler on the city site, George Pogue. It rises about a mile east of the northeast corner of Centre township, flows southwesterly through almost the whole diagonal length of the city, and enters the river at the angle formed by the southern city boundary and the river. Until street improvements turned a large part of the town drainage into it the water was clear, well stocked with the same sort of fish as other streams, and a favorite swimming resort for school-boys. The bottom was heavily wooded, subject to frequent overflows, and often swampy. Gradually, as the town grew, and manufactures and general business followed railroad enterprises, the vicinity of the creek became the site of foundries, machine-shops, mills, and other industrial establishments, and a little later of the gasworks, and these, with the flow of street gutters, turned the clear little woods stream into an open sewer. Worse still, the rapid inflow of street drainage, with other less artificial influences, made it subject to violent and sudden overflows, which in the last twenty years have done so much mischief that suits have been repeatedly brought against the city for indemnity. Very recently a judgment for ten thousand dollars was obtained on one of these suits by a large wholesale house. The current has been obstructed and diverted by the piers and abutments of street and railway bridges, by culverts and the arches of the foundations of large buildings, and in some places " washes'" have cut away the banks so as to seriously impair the value of adjacent lots, and even to imperil houses, and the result of all these co-operating evils has been the recent appointment of a committee of the City Council and Board of Aldermen, in conjunction with several prominent private citizens, to devise a complete and uniform system of protection from overflows, washes, and all forms of damage. As it follows the line of lowest level in the city, draining the site from both sides, it has sometimes been proposed to deepen its bed, wall and arch it in, and make a main sewer of it. A very large portion of it on both banks has been wailed in, and many hundreds of feet arched in by street culverts and other works, and it is not improbable that it will sooner or later be covered throughout, and made to carry off the whole natural flow as well as the street drainage not diverted to other sewers. But very little of it is left in its old bed, its crooks having been straightened into angles and right lines. Occasionally it runs dry in long droughts

The Canal. — Although no natural feature of the city's topography, and a considerable portion of it is effaced, the canal is still conspicuous enough both in its topographical and economical relations to require notice. The section from the feeder-dam in the river at Broad Ripple, some eight or nine miles north, to the city is all that was ever completed of the " Central Canal," which was one of the system of public improvements begun by the State in 1836. In places it was almost completed for twenty-five or thirty miles south of the city, and nearly as far north, but nothing was ever done with it but to leave it to be overgrown with weeds and underbrush, except a short stretch three miles south, where its bed was very level, and the country people used it for a racecourse. Until within ten years or so the completed section from Broad Ripple passed clear through the city, mainly along the line of Missouri Street to Merrill Street, and in early times was used for fishing, swimming, skating, ice-packing, occasional baptisms by churches, and semi-occasional cargoes of wood in flat-boats. The State sold it a few years after its completion to the " Central Canal Hydraulic and Water-Works Company," and that sold to others till it came into the hands of the company which established the water-works, and used it as a motive-power, some dozen years ago. Then the portion south of Market Street was deepened, and a sewer built in it, connecting with the Kentucky Avenue trunk sewer, and it was filled up, graded, and partially improved, and is now a street. Above Market Street it continues in its former condition, used for boating and ice-packing by permission of the proprietary company, and for bathing without it. Below the line of Merrill Street to the city limits the canal passed through private property, which has reverted to the original owners or their assigns, who have left hardly a visible trace of it. When first completed, an enlargement or basin was made on the site of the present steel-rail mill, and a culvert was made over the creek that occasionally broke and made trouble. The culvert is almost the only relic of the lower end of the city section. On each side of Washington Street, on the east bank of the canal, a square basin opening into it was made, each about two hundred feet square. These have long disappeared, and with them a ditch along the south side of Washington Street, extending east to within a short distance of Mississippi, then turning directly south to Maryland Street, and there turning west entered the canal at the Maryland Street bridge. The bridges were all made with " tow-paths" beneath them on the west side. These disappeared with the basins and ditches. A couple of wooden locks were built at the south line of the " donation," but never finished. They became a favorite fishing-place, as did the place where the water, while it lasted, emptied into Pleasant Run, near the river. Water never passed farther south. A stone lock was built at Market Street, and used a few times. From this lock an arm of the canal ran west two blocks or so, a few feet north of Market Street, where it entered a basin some four or five hundred feet long, extending north into the " Military Ground." From the north end of this basin a " tumble" let the water down a dozen feet into a race-way that turned south, crossed Washington Street, and entered a sort of natural basin, formerly one of the old " ravines," whence the water fell by another tumble into the river at the site of the present water-works. The water was let into the canal at the feeder-dam in the spring or early summer of 1839, and the State immediately leased water-power to one woolen and one oil-mill, and to two each of grist-, saw-, cotton-, and paper-mills. These were located at the Market Street lock, on the river bank, where the race-way fell into the river, and at the south end of the basin in the Military Ground. Some years later a gristmill south of the donation obtained its power from the canal. The water-works company now owning it have recently replaced the decayed aqueduct over Fall Creek with one of the most substantial character, and have at one time or another greatly improved the feeder-dam. Its present use is mainly to supply power to the pumping-engines of the waterworks.

The River (the Wa-me-ca-me-ca). — From the upper to the lower bridge of the Belt Railroad the river may be considered a part of the city site, though but a small portion bounds the site on the west, and a smaller portion divides it from the Indianola suburb. This section is pretty nearly three miles long in a straight line, and nearly four following the banks. Originally it was a stream of considerable volume, averaging probably four hundred feet in width, and, except upon a few shoal spots, too deep to be fordable. There was a ford a little way below the " Old Graveyard," near the present site of the Vincennes Railroad bridge, and in use till some dozen or fifteen years ago, when an iron bridge was built a few hundred feet above it. Another ford on the Lafayette wagon-road was a good deal used later, and known as " Crowder's" and " Garner's Ford." Another iron bridge has superseded it. In the town communication was kept up with the west side by a ferry a little below the National road bridge. Directly west of the " Old Graveyard," and three or four hundred feet above the site of the present iron bridge, was a low sandy island, containing a couple or three acres, and covered with large sycamores and elms, called " Governor's Island." At the head of it, where a narrow " chute" separated it from the high and heavily-wooded ground of the cemetery, was a huge drift that was for many years a favorite fishing-place of the towns-people. A little above this, on the west side, a considerable " bayou" ran out, circling irregularly around an extensive tract, a perfect wilderness of woods and weeds, spice-bush and papaw, and re-entered the river a half-mile or so lower. A wing-dam at the upper mouth converted it into a race-way for a grist-mill erected on the south bank, near the present line of the Belt Railroad, in the year 1823. This was one of the first mills built in the county. A little way east of it, nearer the river, the first distillery in the county was established near the same time, turning out for several years a small quantity of " forty-rod" whiskey that was known as " Bayou Blue." Some remains of the mill were discernible a dozen years ago, but all are gone now, and the bayou itself is measurably effaced by plowing and naturally drying out. " Governor's Island" has entirely disappeared too. The river, during the freshets that have almost annually occurred ever since the first settlement was made, has cut away the eastern bank along the " Old Graveyard" line until its entire volume is now east of the site of the island, and that once conspicuous feature is merged in the broad low sand-bar that fills the old bed. The channel has shifted at this point, as may be seen by the west bank, four hundred feet or more. A like change, and even greater, has taken place below, where the current has cut the west bank, and filled in on the east side a wide swampy tract of several acres below and along the Graveyard Pond site, and at the foot of what used to be called the High Banks. Within a few years freshets have cut through a sharp elbow on the west side at this same place, and instead of whittling away the point piecemeal as before, the future action of the water seems likely to take the main volume bodily some hundreds of feet inland. The same agencies have cut a number of small channels through the " bottom" a little lower, and threaten to make a tolerably straight course from near the old ford down to a point a little below the lower mouth of the old bayou. These are the most notable changes in the river-bed in or near the city.

There has come, with the clearing of the country, the drainage of swamps, and disappearance of little springs and rivulets, the same change that has come upon all the streams of the country and of the world under the same conditions. The volume of water is smaller, low-water mark is lower, the freshets more sudden and evanescent. It happens frequently now that in protracted droughts the volume of water is reduced to that of a very moderate creek, not exceeding fifty or sixty feet in width in very shoal places, and the tributary streams. Eagle and Pleasant Run, go dry altogether near their mouths. Pall Creek, however, is not known to have ever been so greatly reduced. Before settlement and cultivation had changed the face of the country so greatly the annual freshets, — sometimes semi-annual, — usually in the latter part of winter or spring, were used to carry some of the country's products to market down on the lower Ohio and Mississippi. This was done in flat-boats, measuring fifty or sixty feet long by twelve to fifteen wide, covered in with a sort of house, the roof of which was the deck, where long, heavy side-oars and still longer and heavier steering oars were managed. The current, however, was the motive-power. In this floating house was stored, according to the business or fancy of the shipper, baled hay, corn, wheat, or oats, whiskey, pork, poultry, these chiefly. They were run out at the height of a freshet, so as to pass over a few dams that stood in the way, and were the source of the greatest peril to these self-insured shippers. This sort of commerce was maintained at intervals for probably twenty years, but most largely from about 1835 till the Madison Railroad offered a better way out, in the fall of 1847. During the first few years of the city's existence occasional cargoes of corn and game were brought down the river by the Indians, and up the river in keel-boats by poling and " cordelling," or hauling along with ropes, in canal-boat fashion. Not much of either was ever done, however, the new settlement depending mainly on land transportation from the White Water and on its own products.

The prominent event in the history of the city's connection with the river is the attempt to make it or prove it what Congress had declared it to be, a navigable stream. A full account will be given in another place, but it may be noted here that a survey was made in 1825 which maintained the practicability of navigation three months in the year for a distance of four hundred and fifteen miles at an annual expense of fifteen hundred dollars. A reward of two hundred dollars was offered to the first steamer's captain who should bring his boat to the town, and in 1830 one came as far as Spencer, Owen Co., and another came up about the same distance or a little nearer, but in the spring of 1831 the " Robert Hanna," bought for the purpose, it was said, of carrying stone from the Bluffs of the river for the piers and abutments of the National road bridge, came clear up to the town, raising a great excitement and high anticipations of river commerce. She remained a couple of days, ran upon a bar going back, and stuck a month or two, and finally got into safe water some time during the fall. This was the last of the navigation of White River, except by the flat-boats referred to and a little pleasure steamer in 1865, that made a few trips during the year and was wrecked the next summer. Within the present year a little picnic steamer has been built at Broad Ripple, but it can hardly be deemed an exception to the universal failure of White River navigation.

There have been a few freshets in the river so high and disastrous that they deserve special notice. The first was in 1828, following an unusually wet spring. During that rise an old hunter paddled his canoe through the fork of a large tree on Governor's Island, a height of overflow that has probably never been equaled since. The " bottom" lands for many miles were seriously damaged, fences washed away, stock drowned, crops in store injured, though, as suggested by Mr. Ignatius Brown, less damage was done than by smaller floods following when the country was better settled. The Legislature made some relief provision for the sufferers by remitting taxes. The next great flood was early in January, 1847. The water then for a time threatened the National road bridge. It broke through the little suburb of Indianola, or " Stringtown" as it was then called, from its being strung out along the National road, and cut two deep gullies through the solidly-graded and heavily-macadamized pike, churning out on the south side in the soft, loose soil of the river bottom huge holes nearly a hundred feet in diameter and twenty or more deep. Several houses were washed away, and one was left on the slope of one of the big holes, where it remained tilted over and apparently ready to fall for several months. The third big flood was in 1858. In 1875 came two nearly equal to that of 1847, the first in May, the next in August, both reaching about the same height. But for the levees then built along the west bank for a mile and more the whole of the country west of the river to the bluff of the " bottom" would have been drowned. In the early part of February of this year (1883) the highest flood ever known, except possibly that of 1847 and that of 1828, occurred, filled a large number of houses in Indianola, driving out the occupants and damaging walls and furniture, and sweeping clear over the National road for the first time since 1847. It was more than a foot higher than either flood of 1875. Levees now protect the west side — the only one endangered by floods to any extent within the limits of costly improvements — for nearly three miles south of the Vandalia Railroad to a point opposite the mouth of Pleasant Run. These will be extended in time parallel with the levees on the east side below Pleasant Run. These are the chief levees on the river. Some small ones have been made along the south bank of Fall Creek at the northern limit of the city site

Until 1852 the only bridge over White River in or near the town was that built by the national government for the great national highway, the " Cumberland road." This was finished in 1833, and is still in constant use, considerably dilapidated through culpable neglect, but still solid in its arches and serviceable. In 1852 the Vandalia Railroad Company put up a bridge for their line a quarter of a mile south of the old one. Since then there have been built for railroad or ordinary service no less than nine bridges, all of iron or mixed iron and timber. They are, beginning at the north, the Lafayette or Crawfordsville road wagon-bridge, the Upper Belt road bridge, the Michigan Street and Washington Street wagon-bridges, the old National road bridge, the St. Louis Railroad bridge, the Vandalia Railroad bridge, the Old Cemetery wagon-bridge, the Vincennes Railroad bridge, the Morris Street wagon-bridge, the Lower Belt road bridge, — eleven in all. The bridges on the smaller streams and the remainder of the canal are too numerous to be worth special notice.

Turnpikes. — All the wagon-roads out of the city are now graveled, and little inferior to macadamized roads. For a few years, some thirty years or so ago, a sort of mania for plank-roads ran over the State, and the western division of the National road was planked. It had then been given to the State by the general government (as had all the remainder of the road to the States through which it passed), and by the State had been assigned to a plank-road company, which made this improvement. It was a failure after the first few months. The planks warped, the ends turned up, and the covering soon became a nuisance, and was abandoned for coarse gravel, which packs solidly and makes a fairly smooth, durable, and dry road. Many of the county and neighborhood roads have been improved in the same way. Most of these improved roads are held by companies and are maintained by tolls, which in the case of the city roads prove to be a handsome return upon the investment. Some of them have been sold to the county and made free, but several are still held by the companies. The principal roads leading out of the city are the east and west divisions of the National road; northeast, the Pendleton road; southeast, the south division of the Michigan road and the Old Shelbyville road; south, the Madison road, the "Three Notch" road, the Bluff road; southwest, the Mooresville road; northwest, the Crawfordsville and Lafayette road and the north division of the Michigan road; north, the Westfield and the Old Noblesville road.

Area and Present Condition. — The original city plat was a square mile, laid off in the center of four square miles donated by Congress in 1816 for a site for the State capital. The half-mile border around this square was made " out-lots," and used as farm lands for years, but after 1847 was rapidly absorbed into the city, until at the commencement of the civil war the entire " donation" was included in the city, and was more or less compactly built over. The town government was extended over the whole four sections in 1838, but it was ten years later, following the completion of the first railway, before any considerable occupancy of this tract was attempted, and then it was mainly in the vicinity of the new railway depot. Many additions of greater or less extent have been made, more than doubling the area of the original four sections of the " donation." It is estimated now (1883) that an area of about eleven square miles (or seven thousand acres) is included in the limits of the city. It occupies a little more than one-fourth of the area of Centre township, which is a little larger than a Congressional township of six miles square

Population. — The first estimate of population rests upon an enumeration made by visitors of the Union Sunday-school in the spring of 1824, when 100 families were counted upon the " donation," making a probable population of 500 or more, represented by 100 voters, or 120 possibly, with 50 voters representing nobody but themselves, or a total population of near 600. In 1827 a careful census was taken, and the population found to count up 1066. In 1830 it was about 1500; in 1840, 4000; in 1850, 8034; in 1860, 18,611; in 1870, 48,244; in 1880, 75,056. It is now estimated at about 95,000, of which one-sixth is foreign-born, mainly Irish and Germans, the former counting a little more than half of the latter, or, with all other foreign-born population, making a little more than half of all of that class. In 1880 the whole of German birth was 6070; of Irish birth, 3660; and of all other foreign nationalities, 2880. The proportions are now about 8000, 4000, and 3000. The basis of the estimate of population that gives the closest as well as the most trustworthy result is that of the enumeration of school children under the law. This is made every year to determine the ratio of distribution of the State's school fund, and is probably as accurate as the national census. It shows the proportion of children of " school age" (from six to twenty-one) in 1880 to have been to the whole population as one to two and four-fifths. The school enumeration for 1883 makes the total 33,079, which gives at the ascertained ratio a population a little less than 93,000. The estimate of the secretary of the Board of Trade is 100,000, but no safe basis of calculation will give that result. A fair estimate on the 1st of January, 1884, makes the population 95,000.

Government. — The city government is composed of a mayor, Board of Aldermen, Common Council, clerk, treasurer, and assessor, elected by popular vote; marshal, chief of the fire department, attorney, elected by the Council; and a Board of Police Commissioners, appointed by the State officers and paid by the city, who have entire control of the police force, also paid by the city. The officers elected by the people serve two years, the others one. The police commissioners go out and are replaced in successive years, one in one, one in two, and one in three.

Police. — The police force consists of a chief, two captains, and sixty-five men. Besides the regular force there are three or four specially in charge of the Union Depot, authorized by the city but paid by the Union Railway Company. The merchants' police, a small force of men, is appointed by the city, but paid by the citizens whose property is specially in their care.

The Fire Department consists of a chief and his assistants, and a working force, held in this service exclusively, of seventy-seven men, including the officers named. It has six steam-engines, four hose-reels, two hook-and-ladder wagons, uses six hundred and twenty-two hydrants, one hundred and forty-nine cisterns, ranging in capacity from one thousand to two thousand five hundred barrels, and one hundred and thirty electric signal-boxes or alarm stations.

Streets. — There are four hundred and fifty streets, and larger alleys used as streets, all more or less improved by grading and graveling or bouldering. A very few are paved with wooden blocks, and one of these has within a year been torn up and replaced by bowlders. A large number of streets are bouldered, but much the larger portion are graded and covered heavily with coarse gravel, which is found to make a good durable street, given to grind into dust and mud, but always available and cheap. The aggregate length of streets is not accurately known, but as a few are four miles long or more, and a great many from one to two miles, the aggregate length is conjectured to be probably between seven hundred and eight hundred miles. On them is a total length of water-main of fifty-one miles, with twenty-five large iron drinking-fountains " for man and beast." With these are ninety miles of gas-mains and two thousand four hundred and seventy-nine lamps. There are thirteen lines of street railways, owning five hundred mules and employing one hundred drivers. All belong to one company.

Parks. — A very pleasing feature of the city is its parks, of which there are four: 1st, Circle Park, intended to have been put in the center of the " donation," as the site of the Governor's official residence, but never used for that purpose, and, on account of the propinquity of Pogue's Run bottom, put a little aside from the central point, which is a half-square south of the southeast corner of Washington and Illinois Streets; 2nd, Military Park, the remains of a military reservation; 3rd, University Park, held by the city on consent of the Legislature, but given originally to help endow a State University at the capital; 4th, Garfield Park, originally Southern Park, a large tract at the extreme south of the city, purchased some years ago to give the population of that part of the city a place of recreation, but so far inadequately improved.

Taxes. — The levy for general purposes last year was 90 cents on $100, for school purposes 22 cents, making a total of $1.12, the legal limit of taxation for city purposes. This rate is levied on a total valuation of $52,633,510, divided into "realty," $22,863,525; " improvements," $16,363,200; " personal," $13,406,755. There are some slight discrepancies in these statements, as the assessors' returns had not been corrected when this report was given. The total valuation of property for taxation in 1850 was $2,326,185; in 1860, $10,700,000; in 1866, the first valuation after the close of the war, $24,835,750; in 1870, $24,656,460. A decline in real estate came in 1868, the valuation dropping from $25,500,000 in 1867 to $24,000,000 in 1868, and to $22,000,000 in 1869, recovering partially in 1870, and rising to $30,000,000 in 1871. The rise continued till 1874, then the financial crash of 1873 began to operate, and a second decline began, which is now about overcome. The city revenue for the last year was $591,312.

Business. — The secretary of the Board of Trade reports for the year ending with the end of 1882 that there were 772 manufacturing establishments in the city, with $12,270,000 of capital, employing an average of 12,000 hands at an average rate of $2.20 a day, using $18,730,000 of material, and producing $30,100,000 of merchantable goods. The wholesale trade in sixteen lines of business amounted to $25,440,000. The total clearances of the clearing-house was $101,577,523. There are 12 banks in the city, 6 national and 6 private, with a total capital of $2,880,000. The average of monthly deposits was $11,435,000. Total receipts of grain for 1882, 21,242,897 bushels; of coal, about 400,000 tons, or 202,711 for the last six months. Of live-stock, 5,319,611 hogs, 640,363 cattle, 849,936 sheep, 50,795 horses, of which there was disposed of in the city 3,020,913 hogs, 106,178 cattle, 70,543 sheep, 2533 horses. Of lumber, 125,000 M's, or 125,000,000 feet. The Board of Trade has 1000 members.

Railroads. — Counting the two divisions of the Jeffersonville Railroad separately, as they were built and operated at first, there are fourteen railroads completed and in operation centering in Indianapolis, running altogether 114 passenger trains both ways daily, and handling here an average of 2500 freight cars daily, each car having a capacity of twelve tons at least, and making a total daily tonnage of 30,000 tons, equal to the trade of a seaport receiving and sending out thirty vessels daily of 1000 tons each. Besides the fourteen lines of railroad centering in the city, there is the Union Railway Company with a length of track enough to connect them all at the Union Passenger Depot, and now by lease in control of the Belt Railway, which very nearly encircles the city, and connects all the roads for freight purposes by a line that enables transfers of cars and trains to be made outside of the city, avoiding the obstruction of many streets. Two new roads are in progress. Every county in the State but three can be reached by rail, and nearly every county-seat can be visited and a return made the same day.

Newspapers and Periodicals. — There are six daily newspapers in the city, all morning issues except one. There is one semi-weekly, twenty-five weeklies (including the weekly editions of dailies), one serai-monthly, and seventeen monthlies.

Amusements. — There are four theatres, one hundred and sixty public halls, four military companies, four musical societies, and three brass bands; ten libraries, including the State and City and County, and the Stat« Geological Museum, containing over 100,000 specimens, and valued at over $100,000.

Business Associations. — Insurance fifteen; for manufactures and other purposes incorporated, sixty-one, with a capital of $8,300,000; building and loan societies nineteen, with an aggregate capital of $1,755,000; miscellaneous associations, fifty-five; hotels, forty.

Professions. — Lawyers, two hundred; physicians, two hundred and thirty-two. (School-teachers and preachers, see Schools and Churches.) Secret Societies. — The secret societies number 23, with 143 lodges or separate organizations. The Masons have 21 lodges of whites and 6 of colored members; the Odd Fellows have 23 in all; the Knights of Pythias have 13; the Hibernians have 3. Besides these the Red Men, and Elks, and Druids, and several other orders have each one or more lodges.

Churches. — Baptist, 13; Catholic, 7; Christian, 6; Congregational, 2; Episcopal, 5; Reformed Episcopal, 1; Evangelical Alliance, 1; United Brethren, 1; Friends, 1; German Reformed, 3; Hebrews, 2; Lutheran, 6; Methodist, 23; Protestant Methodist, 1; Presbyterian, 14; Swedenborgian, 1; United Presbyterian, 1. In all there are 88 churches in the city. Two denominations that at one time were quite prominent, the Universalist and Unitarian, have disappeared altogether in the last few years as distinct sects.

Health and Sanitary Conditions. — The station at Indianapolis of the United States Signal Service reports for the last year an annual mean of temperature of 53.8; an annual mean of humidity of 71.1; 107 clear days, 141 fair days, and 117 cloudy days; a mean fall of rain and snow of 53.68 inches; the highest temperature 94°, the lowest 10° below zero. Drainage is effected by an incomplete but steadily advancing system of sewage, with two trunk lines at present on Washington and South Streets, and a number of small tributary sewers. The health of the city is surpassed by no city and not many rural regions in the world. The last report of the Board of Health covers seven months from January to July, inclusive, 1883, and shows, with the months of the preceding year back to July, an average of less than 140 a month. This gives a death-rate of 18 ^2/3 in 1000; that of London is 21 ^1/2 per 1000, of Paris 26 ½ , of Vienna 29, of New York 29 ^2/3 . Very few rural communities in Europe or this country show a deathrate lower than 19 in 1000.

Schools. — The free school system went into operation in 1853, when the accumulation of public funds had allowed the previous purchase of grounds and the erection of houses sufficient for the town's needs, a popular vote six years before having authorized a special city tax for school purposes. The average attendance at the outset in April, 1853, was 340. In three years it was 1400. It is now (1883) 9938, while 13,685 children are enrolled on the school records, and the city contains a juvenile population of school age (from six to twenty-one) of 33,079. The enrollment is considerably less than half of the population, while the attendance is about one-third. This is a reduction of three per cent, in two years. There are now belonging to the public school system 29 brick houses and 2 frame. Of these 2 are one story, 25 are two stories, 3 of three stories; 8 have four rooms or less, 11 have eight rooms, 12 have nine rooms. In all there are 245 rooms, with a seating capacity of 12,746, nearly equal to the entire enrollment. Value of grounds and buildings, $938,419.30. There are 19 male teachers, 234 female teachers; 21 are colored, 232 white. Salaries in the High School, maximum $2000, minimum $700, average $1037; 19 in Primary schools, maximum $1100, minimum $650, average $900.92; grade teachers, maximum $650, minimum $300, average $500.

Private schools are nearly as numerous as public schools, but, of course, less largely attended. There are twenty-six of these, some of them of a denominational character, some wholly secular, but most of a higher grade than the primaries of the public system. A few will rank with the preparatory schools of the best colleges. Besides there are five kindergartens. Of the collegiate class of educational institutions, there are four medical schools authorized to give diplomas and degrees, one law school of the same grade, and, more considerable than these, Butler University, now at Irvington, formerly the Northwestern Christian University, and located in the northeastern part of the city.

Under the same management as the public schools is the Public Library, supported by a tax of two cents on one hundred dollars, and containing about forty thousand volumes.

General View and Historical Outline. — A summary of the history of the city and of its different stages of growth, with a glance at its present condition, will give the reader a more definite and durable impression of such points as he may desire to retain for his own purposes or for the information of others, than he could obtain from the best methodized and most complete system of details unaccompanied by such an outline. This " general view" will, therefore, present the epochs in the progress of Indianapolis, and leave the details of development in each to the chapters treating the different departments which make up the body of its history.

The first settlement of Marion County may be safely dated in the spring of 1820, though there is a probability of the arrival of one settler a year earlier, and contemporaneously with the Whetzel (relatives of the noted Indian-fighter of West Virginia, Lewis Whetzel) settlement at the bluffs of White River, or, as the Indians called it, Wah-me-ca-me-ca. In the fall of 1818 the Delaware tribes by treaty ceded to the United States the region now known as Central Indiana, with a reservation of possession till 1821. Little more regard was paid to Indian rights then than since, and settlers began, with leave or without it, to take up lands in the " New Purchase," as it was called, within six months after the bargain was made. By midsummer, 1820, there was a little village collected along and near the east bank of White River, and on the 7th of June the commissioners of the State Legislature selected it as the site of the future capital. Congress had given the State, on its admission into the Union in 1816, four sections, or two miles square, for a capital site, on any of the unsold lands of the government, and at the junction of Fall Creek and White River the location was fixed. The town was laid out in the summer of 1821, one mile square, with the remainder of the four sections divided round it into " out-lots." The first sale of lots was held in the fall of that year, the proceeds to go to the erection of such buildings as the State should require at its capital. Here begins the first stage of the city's existence.

First Period. — From the first undisputed settlement in the spring of 1820 to the removal of the State offices from Corydon in the fall of 1824, and the first meeting of the Legislature the following winter, a period of nearly five years, Indianapolis was a pioneer village, scattered about in the dense woods, grievously troubled with chills and fever, and little more encouraged for the future than any other little county town. The first newspaper was started in 1822, the next in 1823; the first Sunday-school in 1823; the first church was built in 1824; the post office opened in March, 1822.

Second Period. — From the arrival of the capital, in a four-horse wagon and ten days from the Ohio, to the completion of the first railway in October, 1847, an interval of nearly twenty-three years, the town was passing through its second stage. It grew from a village to a respectable town, with several partially developed germs of industries, which have since become second to very few in the Union, and with a mayor and Council and the name and airs of a city. For the first eleven years of this period the State Legislature met in the county court-house. In 1832 came the first town government by " trustees," changed to " councilman" in 1838, and to " mayor and Council" in 1847. In 1835 the old State House was completed, and the first fire-engine bought. In 1834 the first bank (the old State Bank) was chartered. In 1832 the first manufacturing enterprise was put in operation, and failed in a year or two more. The first brewery, tobacco-factory, linseed-oil mill, paper-mill, merchant flour-mill, woolen-mill, soap-factory, the first pork-packing, all date from about 1835 to 1840. An iron foundry was attempted in 1832, but failed very soon. In 1842 the first steps were taken to establish the Asylum for the Insane. In 1843 the first tax was levied to prepare for the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. In 1845 a similar levy was made to establish the Asylum for the Blind. These are all located in or near the city. This was a period of planting father than growth. The failure of the " Internal Improvement" system in 1839 left the town with a few miles of useless canal. The river was never navigable except for flat-boats in spring freshets. But one steamer ever reached the town, and it did not get back for six months. There were no means of transportation, natural or artificial, but dirt-roads " crosslayed" or " corduroyed," and covered four-horse wagons hauling from Cincinnati at a dollar a hundred. All this restriction of business and intercourse changed a good deal with the completion of the old Madison Railroad, which had formed part of the State's system of improvements, and been sold to a company when the State failed. Within a half dozen years came a half-dozen more railroads, and the city entered what may be called its " third period," though, except in its greater rate of progress, there is little to distinguish it from that which followed it and covers the city's history to the present time.

Third Period. — From the completion of the first railroad, Oct. 1, 1847, to the breaking out of the civil war in April, 1861, a period of thirteen years and a half, there was a decided quickening of the city's energy and development. To it belongs the establishment of the free school system in 1853, and the permanent establishment of all the present leading industries in iron, lumber, grain, and pork. There were the seeds and some wholesome sprouts of all these before, but with the opening of railroad transportation came an impulse that made almost a new creation. The Jeffersonville Railroad, the Bellefontaine (Bee Line), the Vandalia, and the Lafayette were all completed in 1852, and portions of all were in operation a year or two earlier. The Central (Pan Handle) was completed in 1853, the Peru in 1854, the Cincinnati (now with Lafayette making Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago) in 1853, the Union tracks and depot in 1853. With the concentration of the State's troops here during the war, and the business of all kinds required for their care, equipment, and transportation, came a sudden force of growth which compelled business to betake itself to several convenient streets, when previously it had been confined mainly to Washington Street and the vicinity of the Union Depot. Population more than doubled during this period, from eight thousand in 1850 to eighteen thousand in 1860, but it nearly tripled from 1860 to 1870. The civil war and the changes it forced or aided may, therefore, properly mark an epoch in the city's history and begin the " fourth period." Fourth Period From 1861 to 1883, twenty-two years, population increased from forty-eight thousand to about ninety-five thousand, and the amount of business increased in a still larger proportion. The Junction, the Vincennes, the Bloomington and Western, the St. Louis, the Springfield and Decatur, the Chicago Air Line, and the Belt Railroads have all been built in this period, and two others projected. Other results are better exhibited in a condensed statement of the present condition of the city, produced by the changes and advances in the sixty-three years covered by these four periods. One form of these combined results may be stated in the favorite boast of the citizens, that " Indianapolis is the largest wholly inland city in the United States." It has not and never has had any navigable water nearer than the Ohio and the lower Wabash, except; as already remarked, that freshets in the river occasionally let a few flat-boats, loaded with grain, or whiskey, or pork, or poultry, or hay, down into the Mississippi to the towns in the cotton and sugar region. But these opportunities were uncertain, and the voyages were uncertain when opportunities were used, so that flat boating never contributed sensibly to the growth of Indianapolis.