By Chris Flook| Special to the Star Press
There is no agreed-upon definition of a ghost town. For most, the term describes the location of a former human settlement, now abandoned.
By that definition, Delaware County is full of ghost towns: lost communities forsaken by forebears and forgotten in the folds of time. A dozen or so such "extinct" settlements dot our county’s landscape, though the epicenter is Washington Township.
Most county maps today show just two communities in the township: the town of Gaston at the north terminus of the Yorktown-Gaston Pike, and the village of Wheeling, located where the Muncie-Wheeling Pike, Eaton-Wheeling Pike and Jonesboro Road meet at the Mississinewa River’s south bank.
Neither is a ghost town. Gaston was platted in 1855 and has remained a vibrant community. Originally founded as New Corner, the settlement grew to prosperity during the gas boom and with the arrival of the Cincinnati, Richmond & Muncie Railroad in 1901 (today’s Cardinal Greenway). Locals adopted the name Gaston during the boom, making it official in 1904 when the town incorporated.
Wheeling is older, having originated as an 1820s frontier trading center at the intersection of a federal government road (today’s Jonesboro Road/Eaton-Wheeling Pike) and the Mississinewa River. The site was purchased by William McCormick in 1834 and made into a small trading hamlet.
William originally called his new settlement "McCormicks" but soon renamed it "Cranberry" when he established a post office. McCormick changed the name again to "Wheeling" in 1838 when he officially filed the village plat map.
Wheeling was prosperous in the years before the Civil War, when small-scale riverboat traffic still operated on the Mississinewa. At its height, Wheeling had a school, Methodist church, sawmill, hotel and tavern. When the Chicago, Indiana & Eastern Railway was built west of the village in 1900, a "New Wheeling" addition was platted along the line. Wheeling reverted into a sleepy hamlet after railroad traffic ceased during the Great Depression. The post office closed in 1938.
Nothing left of Elizabethtown
Just north across the river from Wheeling lies the site of Elizabethtown, Delaware County’s archetypal ghost town. The settlement grew to relative prominence in the 1830s around Joseph Wilson’s "Elizabeth" grist mill. At its commercial height in the mid-19th century, Elizabethtown had a blacksmith, cabinetmaker, general store, dock, distillery and Presbyterian church. A fire destroyed the distillery in 1870, and the Great Flood of 1913 incapacitated the mill. Today there’s nothing left of Elizabethtown but the cemetery.
Cologne was once 'quite a lively place'
West of Elizabethtown and Wheeling, beyond Interstate 69 in Section 13 of Washington Township, lies another ghost town, named Cologne. The settlement grew around a rural post office that existed from 1870 to 1884 on the farm of Morris Jones. A Munsonian by the name of William Ladd bought the Jones Farm in 1881 and, in addition to serving as Cologne’s postmaster, opened a general store along the busy Wheeling-Summitville Turnpike.
Ladd described Cologne in a December 1881 letter to the Muncie Morning News as “quite a lively place.” His new store had “a large stock of goods and is doing good business.” The little hamlet even had a resident physician, Dr. W.T. Easter, and a butcher, W.I. McNabny. “Mack is an old Hoosier,” Ladd boasted, so he “cuts beef any way you want it.” Cologne’s blacksmith was “Old Billy Stokes,” who was “getting too feeble to do hard work.” Jennie Jones had taught the fall term that year at Cologne’s schoolhouse, known informally at the time as Zion School. Ladd praised Jones: “The scholars all like her and no complaint from patrons.”
The school was nicknamed after Cologne’s lone house of worship, Zion Chapel Methodist Church. Built in 1867, the church stood for almost a century before it was demolished in 1966. A new schoolhouse was built in 1900 but closed a few decades later. The structure still stands today, though it’s been converted into a private residence. It and the Zion Chapel Cemetery are all that remain of Cologne.
Culbertson's Corner lasted as long as its post office
Another ghost town named Culbertson’s Corner was south of Cologne and west of Gaston, at the intersecting corners of Sections 25, 30, 31 and 36 in Washington Township. The settlement grew around an 1870s post office on the farm of David Culbertson. At its height, Culbertson’s Corner had saw and grist mills, a general store and schoolhouse. The hamlet disappeared in the late 1880s after the post office closed.
Hamlets grew near rail stations
Two rural railroad stops also existed in Washington Township, though they aren’t exactly ghost towns because people still live there. The tiny hamlet of Janney lies southwest of Matthews in the northwest corner of Delaware County. Janney was established in the early 1900s around a rural Cincinnati, Richmond & Muncie Railroad station on the Wheeling-Summitville Pike. The settlement was named after Joseph Janney, an early Washington Township settler.
Stockport was another rural Washington Township rail station. It was located south of Wheeling where the Chicago, Indiana & Eastern Railway met the Muncie-Wheeling Pike. When the railroad was active between 1900-1920s, Stockport served as a livestock shipping station for township farmers. Stockport revived a bit mid-century when the feds temporarily ran U.S. 35 over the Muncie-Wheeling Pike. In addition to holding pens and the station, Stockport had a schoolhouse, general store, post office and gas station.
Slickville relied on tile works
Although not in Washington Township, the nearby ghost town of Slickville sat just across the border with Harrison Township, near the Madison County line. Built around an 1880s tile works, Slickville grew to include a general store and residential houses. After the tile works closed, Slickville reverted to farmland in the early 1900s.
Pitts Burgh existed at a bend on the river
Finally, the ghost town of Pitts Burgh lies upriver from Wheeling in Union Township’s Section 20. Like nearby Wheeling and Elizabethtown, Pitts Burgh grew in the years before the Civil War as a river trading and agricultural processing center. It was strategically located where the fed’s road (Eaton-Wheeling Pike) met a bend in the Mississinewa River. Although modern houses exist at Pitts Burgh today, the original settlement all but disappeared by 1880.
At best, no more than two dozen people lived in Pitts Burg at any one time in history. Ditto for Elizabethtown, Cologne, Culbertson’s Corner, Janney, Stockport and Slickville. They’re more like ghost hamlets than towns. However, it’s worth noting that nearby Muncie and Yorktown began similarly in the 1830s. All Delaware County settlements at that time were nothing more than small clusters of houses around mills, schools, churches and post offices.
Tales of ghost towns offer us then cautionary lessons for our own age: The fortunes of today may be fleeting, and tomorrow is never promised.
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society board member and a senior lecturer of media at Ball State University.