Water, Water Everywhere

Okay, I’ll admit it. I was stuck for a topic for this week’s column. Then, while I was brushing my teeth one morning, it hit me (not literally, thank goodness) — water! To be specific, the watercourses in Hamilton County.

Have you ever paid any attention to all the creeks, streams, brooks, branches, etc. that flow through this county? Or, like me, do you usually just drive over them without a second thought? And, how well do you know White River?

Here’s a little history/geography quiz to test your knowledge of our county’s water resources. (Yes, you could get the answers to most of these questions by looking at a map, but that would be cheating. You wouldn’t do that, would you?) 

1. How many townships does White River flow through and which ones are they?

2. Is White River navigable?

3 What creeks were dammed to create Geist Reservoir and Morse Reservoir?

4. What township would you be in if you crossed a bridge over Duck Creek, Bear Creek, Weasel Creek or Pipe Creek?

5. True or False. Every township in Hamilton County has at least a couple of creeks running through it.

6. In what township would you find Mud Creek, Thorpe Creek and Sand Creek?

7. Where do Stony Creek and Cicero Creek flow into White River?

8. How many townships does Cool Creek run through?

9. Hamilton County once had six covered bridges, plus the one at Perkinsville that was shared with Madison County. Were all of those bridges over White River?

The answers:

1. Today, White River touches four townships. It forms the border between Clay and Delaware Townships, and it  flows through Noblesville and White River Townships. That wasn’t always the case, however. Clay Township didn’t extend to the river until 1954. That’s when it acquired the part of Delaware Township that used to lie west of White River.

2. Only to a point. The first settlers had high hopes of using it as a major means of transportation, but they soon discovered that it had too many obstructions and wasn’t deep enough for anything larger than a flatboat. Even flatboats could only travel so far upriver.

3.If you don’t get any other question, you should at least be able to answer this one. Fall Creek was dammed for Geist and Morse Reservoir was created by damming Cicero Creek.

4. White River Township.

5. True. And that’s just naturally occurring watercourses. If you add in all those named, man-made ditches, there’s a LOT of water running through this county. (The ditches are here for drainage. Hamilton County was originally pretty swampy.) 

6. Fall Creek Township.

7. Stony Creek flows into White River just west of Allisonville Road, across from the Wellington Parkway entrance to Noblesville’s Wellington Northeast subdivision. Cicero Creek enters White River less than a mile north of there, just a little bit north of Horseshoe Bend.

8. Cool Creek runs through two townships: Clay and Washington. (A bit of trivia — the 1866 Hamilton County map refers to Cool Creek as “Cold Creek.”)

9. No. Cicero’s covered bridge was over Cicero Creek and the Greenfield Pike (Greenfield Avenue/State Road 238) bridge southeast of Noblesville spanned Stony Creek.

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com