Now That Time Has Had Its Say: a History of the Indianapolis Central Canal, 1835-2002

Now That Time Has Had Its Say tells the story of the Indiana Central Canal, from the time when horses and flatboats carried freight and passengers down its length, to today, when museums, office buildings, and condominiums are being built along its banks. The book is the product of more than two years of research by J. Darrell Bakken, retired vice-president of engineering of the Indianapolis Water Company, who worked in previously untapped archives, discovering documents and never-before published photographs which helped yield the history of the twenty-five mile canal. This technical history begins in 1835, when Indiana caught 'canal fever' and began a multi-million dollar project to build a network of canals to transport passengers and freight throughout the state. One section of that project, the Indiana Central Canal, started in northern Marion County in Broad Ripple, continued through the city of Indianapolis, and ended in Johnson County, near the town of Waverly. For more than forty years the canal was a failure both practically and financially. Finally in 1881 the canal became part of the new Indianapolis Water Company, and from then until the current day it has been an important part of the history of the city of Indianapolis. The latter part of the book documents the impact of community leaders such as General Thomas A. Morris, F. A. W. Davis, Hugh M. K. Landon, Clarence H. Geist, and Thomas W. Moses, and reveals how, from the 1970s onward, the downtown canal became a driving force in the transformation of Indianapolis into one of America's most livable cities.