Note: This series originally aired on WBOI FM public radio of Northeast Indiana. Thanks to Tom Castaldi for allowing and facilitating its reproduction.
There’s one piece of Wabash & Erie Canal history that continues to be passed over. Burnett’s Creek Arch on the Towpath Road in Carroll County has served travelers for nearly two hundred continuous years.
Wabash & Erie Canal engineers crossed the stream by building a stone bridge they called Culvert Number 100, thus enabling canal boats to pass along their way up and down the line. While there were other Wabash & Erie stone structures built in the 1840s, Burnett’s Creek Arch became a road bridge over the stream when the towpath ceased serving the canal. For decades the arch saw horse, buggy and wagon traffic yet even today cars, trucks, farm equipment and bicycles cross it daily.
All along the line many of the canal structures from Fort Wayne had been built of nearby timber and wood was prone to decay when exposed to the elements. Suitable building stone was not found until the line cut through Georgetown Quarry a mere six miles up the line form Burnett’s Creek.
Well-built from the start, it is 150-feet long and 15-feet high. A relic from Indiana’s canal days, it has and continues to earn its keep handling traffic as it has since 1841. An historical sign marks the site, and a set of wooden steps leads down to the stream for a closer view of canal-era stonemasonry.
You can pass over this piece of history at Burnett’s Creek, on the Towpath Road at Lockport. It’s on the north side of the Wabash River between Logansport and Delphi, through some of the most beautiful scenery in the region. The old Towpath Road is a totally different country and most who visit feel the difference. It’s a piece of history to be passed over by people who wish feel what difference almost two centuries can make.
