This Vintage Postcard Calls the Indiana Toll Road ‘Picturesque,’ Do You Agree?

Outside of a trip to Indiana Beach, the National Lake Shore or Holiday World in Santa Claus, not many people dream of a vacation to Indiana. So it might surprise you to find a vintage postcard promoting the "picturesque" Indiana Toll Road.

The post card, which appears to be a late 1950s-early 1960s vintage (the Toll Road opened in 1956), was shared by road enthusiast Facebook page AARoads.

So is the Indiana Toll Road a picturesque road?

Yes

The eastern Toll Road is very rural in character rolling through the farm and lake county in Steuben County as well as agricultural Amish homesteads in Lagrange and Elkhart County. While the Toll Road doesn't offer direct views of Lake Michigan or Indiana Dunes, the Michigan City, LaPorte and Porter exits provide access to those scenic locales.

No

Take the Indiana Toll Road through the industrial Lake County cities of Gary and Hammond, and you likely won't use the picturesque description. Interstate 90 through northwest Indiana navigates through an almost endless backdrop of steel and rail yards. The one break of nature though this stretch is Wolf Lake, a body of water Belt Magazine describes as,

an 804-acre body of water on the Indiana/Illinois border divided in half by a floating I-90 highway and half again by the Harbor Belt Railroad causeway.

The essay Northwest Indiana’s Slow Burn is a fascinating read on the region.

Note - the vintage Toll Road entrance sign photo above that accompanies this article is from a side street (I think around 15th Avenue) in Gary.