Yesterday was a rest day in Madison. We were ensconced in a comfortable house with a great view of the Ohio River. We were told it was a former drug house that had been fixed up as a rental unit. Madison is a historic town. The main transportation link when Indiana was being settled in the early 1800s was the Ohio River. By 1840 Madison was the largest city in Indiana. It was an industrial and agricultural power house, producing ships, carriages, textiles, tobacco, hogs, "Perl buttons" (drilled out of fresh water mussels) and many other products.
Madison made a misstep as railroads began to surpass riverboats. The town wanted a railway, but a steep bluff rises from the river. In a massive engineering project they cut a path through 100 feet of stone for the railway to descend from the top of the bluff to the town. After a 5 year building effort the resulting railroad bed, known as the "incline", had a slope of 5.89 degrees. No engine at the time could pull cars up such a steep slope. The rail cars had to be individually hauled up the incline by teams of horses. On the way down the brakes would sometimes fail, resulting in a derailment and injuries at the base of the incline.
The town faced further decline when a flood in 1937 inundated the first 3 blocks along the river and washed away the railroad tracks and many industrial buildings.
Today Madison is on an upswing, largely because so much of the historic downtown has been preserved. We were lucky not just to learn about the history of Madison from the excellent museum and historical plaques throughout the town, but also from lifelong resident and cycling enthusiast Tom Pritchard. Tom contacted us through Crazy guy and paid us a visit where he filled in details about Madison that only a native would know.
We received yet more free wine from the folks renting us the house. We couldn't drink it but Tom promised to have his wife Karen find a good home for it.
Today we rode from Madison to Salem. Along the way we tried to find more information about the relative abundance of soy beans compared to corn near the Ohio River.
Deer laughing at us as we climbed the road out of Madison. The grade on the road is probably similar to the grade in the incline that plagued the Madison Indianapolis Railroad.
We thought if the farmers were rotating corn and beans we would see some volunteer corn in the bean fields. We didn't. Is absence of evidence evidence of absence?
We flagged down a farmer on a tractor and asked him if anyone around the area ever planted corn. He chuckled and said he had never seen so many beans being planted before. He attributed it to the higher $$$ per bushel for beans this year. However, as we got further away from the river we did start to see corn fields and evidence of crop rotation.
Interesting part of today's route. Some fields in this low lying area that are prone to flooding have been abandoned and are returning to woodland.
Salem is quite different from Madison. Salem has a small downtown based on a classic town square around the courthouse. A new Walmart has been built on the outskirts of Salem but has not yet opened. Today the town square is thriving. I hate to think of what it may look like in 3 years. Will the Salem town square survive?
Market Street in Salem still has the old bricks. Looks cool but I'm glad we didn't have to bike it.
As we passed the Salem Apothecary we noticed it had an old fashioned soda fountain. This required closer inspection. Inside we found two young people named Sabrina and Caleb running the soda fountain. They had graduated from the two different high schools in town, which you might expect to make them rivals, but they seemed to get along just fine. Sabrina had invented the smoothie of the day - Mango / Strawberry. That sounded good so we ordered one and Caleb whipped one up for us. It tasted mighty fine.
