The Michigan Road

The Jim Grey PageRoads


Hamilton County

Hamilton County was founded in 1823 and had an agricultural economy for most of its history. But after World War II, Indianapolis expanded northward and Hamilton County's communities increasingly became Indianapolis suburbs. It is now one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation and certainly the fastest growing county in the state. It is also the wealthiest county in the state, as measured by median household income.

Sources:
Hamilton County, Indiana County History Preservation Society
Hamilton County, Indiana, Wikipedia

Only 1¾ miles of the Michigan Road lie inside Hamilton County. The road cuts across its southwest corner. On this map, the green line is the Marion-Hamilton line and the blue line is the Boone-Hamilton line.

Carmel is a city in Hamilton County. It has been on an annexing bender since the mid 1990s, reflected in its population growth – about 32,500 in 1996 to almost 69,000 in 2007. Somewhere along the line Carmel assumed all of the land around the Michigan Road within the county. Where Carmel goes, roads are improved and shopping centers are built.

Source:
History of Carmel, Indiana, City of Carmel, Indiana

Carmel

A massive improvement to the road was finished in 1997, making it what you see here. When I moved to Indianapolis in 1994, if my memory serves the road four lanes undivided for a short distance north of Indianapolis, and then narrowed to two lanes.

106th St. and Michigan Road

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StartJefferson RipleyDecaturShelbyMarion southMarion centralMarion north
Hamilton • BooneClinton CarrollCass • Fulton MarshallSt. JosephLa Porte

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Created 1 January 2009. Updated 13 March 2009, 2 January 2012.
Photos subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license.
Text copyright 2008, 2009 by Jim Grey. (Replace * with @ if you click that link to send me e-mail.)
Maps are screen shots from Google Maps unless otherwise specified. All copyrights acknowledged.