----- Original Message ----- From: "Dustin Simmons" <simmonsd@iswt.com> To: "Milton Webb" <mwebb@iswt.com> Cc: <tngibson-l@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 9:58 AM Subject: {not a subscriber} Re: An Explanation of the Civil Districts > I am really hoping to find boundaries for current districts at the > courthouse, but I do know of a certain map of Gibson County made by DeBeers > in 1877 of which a copy is on display at both Gibson County High School and > the Gibson County Library. DeBeers also made maps of many other counties at > that time. The maps are really good, and they show corporate boundaries, > districts, roads, and properties with the owners' names noted. The maps > also contained a lot of useful census information, including numbers of > people, broken down into various categories, and listings of businesses. > The maps are astoundingly accurate, especially for the time period. Some > rivers in remote areas are a little stylized, but the roads and property > locations are so exact that every little bend in the roadbed can still be > found with the map where it still exists today. It's ironic to note that > Dyer actually had a bypass long before there was ever a main highway through > town. > > When I get a chance, though, I am going to try to visit the State Archives > and copy area maps from the 1820s to the 1950s. I am really interested in > the evolution of transportation in the area from the building of the > Trenton-Dresden Road, which still exists today, to the beginning of the new > four-lane constructions on the US 45's, and hoping to catch along the way > the realinement of Highway 77 from Dyer to Newbern, the construction of > Highway 41 from Trenton to Kenton, the origins of Baseline Road, what > happened to the missing link of the Jackson-Hickman Turnpike between Trenton > and Tyson Store, and, among many other things, the proposed routes of the > Dyer bypass in 1971 that was never built and proposed routes of a > centralized US 45 that was also never built through the middle of the > separate routes we know today. >