An interstate is impassable by the horse and buggy transportation mandated by Amish beliefs. “I’d sure hate to think about moving from here,” Eugene Stoll says softly, as he watches his grandson playing in the yard. “But with the way we travel and the highway closing the county roads ...”

A road untraveled

Road story
By Fran Quigley

Eugene Stoll stops his team of seven draft horses, climbs down from the seat of the old-fashioned disk harrow, and walks through the half-plowed field to greet us. The horses’ flanks glisten from effort, and as he approaches Stoll wipes his own sun-burnished brow with a battered straw hat. It will take him the better part of three days to plow his field this way; it would take his non-Amish Daviess County neighbors about an hour to do the same job with a good-sized tractor.

The inefficiency does not bother Eugene Stoll. It is the only way this field has been farmed since his great-great-grandfather first moved the family onto the land in the 19th century Amish migration to Daviess County from Pennsylvania. Stoll’s horses need frequent breaks after their long winter rest, and he’s in more of a hurry than usual because he feels that early planting will help if this summer has a drought like last year. But those concerns are just part of a farmer’s life, so they don’t bother him, either.

After Stoll greets me and one of his neighbors, we all stand together in the field for a while and quietly enjoy the sunshine and warmth, a treasure this early in the spring. This field is the center of a family compound whose modest size and neatness reflect the religious beliefs that compel the Stolls to reject worldly goods and closely embrace family and community. On the northern edge of the field sits the home where Stoll and his wife live, on its southern edge are the two newer homes built by his grown sons and their families. One of the sons walks out to the horses and pats them reassuringly. We listen to two jaybirds and a mockingbird. Stoll strokes his long gray beard and tells his neighbor about spying a couple of early martens, apparently scouting out homes for others to follow.

Eugene Stoll is a peaceful man in a peaceful setting, but there is one thing that is bothering him.

We are standing in the middle of I-69.

The latest design of the billion-dollar extension of Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to Evansville has the highway running right through the Stoll family farm, stranding the generations on either side of four lanes of asphalt and splitting the rest of their 495-family Amish community in the process. The new interstate would chew up thousands of acres of farmland, forest and wetlands in its path through Southwestern Indiana, but its impact may be felt most acutely right here where we stand.

The plans for the interstate here require the closure of 15 county roads and the building of precious few overpasses. This is a problem because the Amish tradition is to gather at each other’s homes for their church services, and the Amish regularly work together on construction projects and other tasks. An interstate is impassable by the horse and buggy transportation mandated by Amish beliefs. “I’d sure hate to think about moving from here,” Eugene Stoll says softly, as he watches his grandson playing in the yard. “But with the way we travel and the highway closing the county roads ...”

(above) Joe Gilooly (below) Jane Gilooly

The debate

The I-69 debate has been a feature of the Indiana political landscape for decades. On one side are business interests and several powerful politicians — most significantly, Gov. Frank O’Bannon — who insist that the extension of the highway is a necessary final spoke in Indiana’s Crossroads of America wheel. They say a fast-lane link between Indianapolis and Evansville will fulfill I-69’s destiny as a “Mid-Continent Highway,” and thereby provide a seamless 65-mile-an-hour-no-stoplight trucking route from Canada to Mexico. I-69 supporters insist that economic benefits for adjacent Indiana counties will be scattered off the side of the road along the way. Everyone wins along what former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith, an I-69 booster, called the “golden corridor.”

Opponents of the I-69 extension, which include an unlikely coalition of farmers, environmental groups, taxpayer associations and labor unions, see it differently. They say not only will the highway wipe out the environmentally and culturally valuable habitats in its path, but also that the $1.14 billion price tag will wipe out too much taxpayer money along with it. One study shows the new highway will create so few Indiana jobs that the investment can be expressed as a cost of $1.5 million per job.

I-69 opponents say the need for a smoother ride between Indianapolis and Evansville can best be accomplished by improving the existing I-70/U.S. 41 route. This plan would be to build a bypass around Terre Haute and to upgrade to interstate quality the portion of U.S. 41 that runs between Terre Haute and Evansville.

The I-70/U.S. 41 plan would cost $600 million less and would not cut into nearly as much new terrain. The I-69 expansion is bitterly opposed by the farmers and people of Bloomington in its path, but the people of Terre Haute and Vincennes enthusiastically support the alternative of improving the I-70/U.S. 41 route. Supporters of this alternative say the I-69 plan compared to the I-70/U.S. 41 plan comes down to a cost of $600 million to save 10 miles and 10 minutes on the drive between Indianapolis and Evansville. Citing these figures, Tom Brokaw and NBC News featured the I-69 plan as such a wasteful proposal that it qualified for the program’s designation as a “Fleecing of America.”

Every cost estimate, mileage calculation and job creation figure is a cause for battle between I-69 supporters and opponents. For every study commissioned by economic groups concluding that the proposed highway is a boondoggle, there is a chamber of commerce finding that the highway will bring economic Shangri-la to Southwestern Indiana.

There won’t be any consensus on the numbers any time soon. The most recent I-69 plans have been put aside by Gov. O’Bannon, who has ordered a new $7.7 million study that is not expected to be completed before 2002. It is an indication of the contentiousness of the debate that this study was challenged even before it began. I-69 opponents have pointed out that the firm chosen to conduct the study, Evansville-based Bernadin Lochmueller and Associates, has contributed $122,000 to O’Bannon and the state Democratic Party since 1996.

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