To improve Rockville Road

I’ve written often about the road-network improvements that began in the early decades of the last century. A Facebook group I follow recently shared a newspaper article that offers a glimpse into that era. In Indiana, Rockville Road is one of the 1830s state roads created to connect places around the state. It connected — and still connects — Indianapolis to Rockville in Parke County, in west-central Indiana. Today most of it is US 36. In 1919, however, Rockville Road had barely begun its improvement journey. This short article from the October 21, 1919 issue of the Rockville Tribune sheds some light. Marion County had improved about 1½ miles, from where Rockville Road begins on Indianapolis’s near west side to Lynhurst Drive. Meanwhile, the county immediately west of Marion County had announced plans to pave its portion of the road from the county line to Danville, about 10½ miles. The Indianapolis portion of Rockville Road lies entirely in Wayne Township, and residents there…