Indiana 26 is wonderful

Thanks INDOT.

Thanks Milestone.

At no time in history has Indiana 26 west from Portland to Indiana 1 looked so good and been so safe to drive.

The thank you to INDOT should come with an asterisk, since local residents have been complaining to the Indiana Department of Transportation about that stretch of highway for more than 40 years.

It was dangerously narrow for today’s traffic, had a pair of 90-degree intersection turns, and had deteriorated so badly in recent years that it was often safer to drive in the wrong lane rather than brave the chuckholes and ruts.

Milestone, the contractor on the seven-mile project, fixed all that. In fact, they made it a better highway than most of us could have imagined. The state’s engineers solved the 90-degree turn situation, but it was Milestone and its employees who brought the project to fruition.

Milestone, which has an office in Portland, is part of the Heritage Group, a large, multi-faceted company based in Indianapolis. Among its holdings, in addition to Milestone, is U.S. Aggregates, which operates the former Meshberger Brothers stone quarry west of Portland.

Did those local ties make a difference?

Maybe not.

But it couldn’t have hurt to have people constructing the highway who had ties to the community it serves.

Thanks to everyone involved for a job well done. — J.R.