Southern Indiana Living - March / April 2024

A Walk in the Garden with Bob Hill
Quiet Sites No Longer
My initial meeting with
what became the Port of
Indiana — Jeffersonville
came with very mixed
results. Beginning in 1975 I had
been driving past the then-rural site
along Utica Pike between Jeffersonville
and Utica for 10 years.
The property was farm fields,
a farmhouse and an old wooden
barn, with the Ohio River and Six
Mile Island over there somewhere.
Sure, there were newspaper stories
that indicated Indiana was going to
build a port here, but it just sounded
more like Jacksonville, Florida,
than Jeffersonville, Indiana. A port
in a pasture? No way.
That was in my gotta-havemore-old-barn-boards
phase of
life. I was building a wooden barn
myself. Figuring the port property
was abandoned, and eager for the
barn boards, I parked my pickup
truck on the site, grabbed a hammer
and clawed away, about filling
my truck. I wasn’t home more than
15 minutes when the actual barn
owner showed up and nicely suggested
I return his wood, which I
did. If I didn’t know better I would
have thought he had been watching
me the whole time. He never even
thanked me for my work.
So, fast-forward to 1985 and
the Port of Indiana — Jeffersonville
was open on 1,000 acres — maybe
75% of it still farm fields. And it
grew. And grew. Those driving past
on Utica Pike noticed more buildings,
more railroad tracks and,
yeah, more traffic. All of it from the
same distance. Over there by the
river. A little mysterious. Lit up at
night like a starship hanger. Trespassers
not welcome.
Every once in a while I would
take a chance and drive back in
there, take in the increasing piles
of scrap steel, mounds of salt to
treat the winter roads, immense
piles of shelled corn, barges tied
up to shore, dozens of railroad cars
spread out along the river.
More tracks came. Miles of
tracks. It was interesting to watch
as it seemed like one guy with some
electronic gizmo was controlling
the train engines from the ground.
Nobody up in the cab. Hand-flipping
the switches to guide the engines
from one track to another.
For all that progress the port
and all its goings-on still seemed
so hidden. A good buddy owned a
boat, so we would cruise the Ohio
River, checking out the port from
the Six Mile Island side.
From there we could see the
big protective riverside building,
the places where the barges were
tied up as all sorts of material and
grain was loaded. The barges then
headed down to the Mississippi
to the Gulf of Mexico, or maybe
north toward Minnesota. Or maybe
across the Atlantic Ocean to ports
in Europe. From right here. Just off
Utica Pike.
And that’s not counting the
hundreds of semi-trucks that went
in and out every day. And the delivery
trucks. Have never seen a helicopter
yet, but surely it’s happened.
There was more. Some of the
visible, twice-a-year port entertainment
were the hundreds of grain
trucks that brought in shelled corn
in the fall. It was piled in enormous,
60-foot mounds for weeks at a time,
with tarps for protection. Then all of
it was removed in a massive show
of backhoes and trucks in late winter
to be shipped out. It’s especially
fun to watch the process at night,
the trucks and dumpsters outlined
in tall lights, the grain dust flying in
the air.
Curious about what really
goes on, I checked out the port’s
website. It mentioned in about the
38 years since the port opened —
and maybe 45 years since a guy got
caught stealing some barn boards
— it now hosts 27 companies, including
15 steel-related businesses,
roll-forming steel, galvanizing and
otherwise. It can hold 350 rail cars
near the dock.
Its total annual traffic averages
835 barges a year, 350,000 semitrucks
and 11,000 railroad cars. The
major cargo includes corn, wire
rods, fertilizer, salt, soybeans, steel,
pig iron and liquid asphalt.
The business figures, and some
of these always sound like economists
throwing darts at a Ouija
board, are listed as a $1.8 billion total
economic impact, $96 million in
tax revenue and 12,137 jobs created
with an average salary of $45,000.
Just over there off Utica Pike.
But there was even more in
the neighborhood. Just a few miles
away, and well connected to the
port, is the River Ridge Commerce
Center. Its growth has been a little
more public — and with no old
barns left to tear down since the
government booted the farmers
off the land to build a black powder
and rocket propellant plant in
about 1940.
The government, and well
Sure, there were newspaper stories that indicated
Indiana was going to build a port here, but it just
sounded more like Jacksonville, Florida, than
Jeffersonville, Indiana. A port in a pasture? No way.
ahead of our entry into World War
II, first purchased about 5,000 acres
with 60 families booted off the land.
It purchased another 4,800 acres
stretching southward into Utica
Township, with 50 farmhouses and
35 summer cottages along the Ohio
River seized. One more purchase
would include the old Rose Island
Amusement Park.
Call it the Indiana Army Ammunition
Plant. Its history rings
loudly, thanks to the 27,500 people
who once worked there as the Depression
ended, and another 20,000
who built the facility. Again, the
dutiful Ohio River was a reason for
the site, the water needed to create
the powder and fuel for World War
II, Korea and Vietnam.
Then all went silent. For almost
30 years, until River Ridge
opened in 1998. Several of us got
a tour of the old Army facility before
that. The huge buildings were
ghost-like, filled with old, rusted
assembly lines, dangling pipes and
steel closets. We peeked into one of
the huge, 176 ammunition “igloos,”
the massive soil and concrete bun-
8 • Mar/Apr 2024 • Southern Indiana Living