The Indianapolis Times, Sunday December 31, 1961 by John Peters.
People are champs at naming things. We can’t pass a stray pup, step across a rain-fed stream, or explore a bend in the road without giving it a name.
Wheather we draw names from fact or fantasy, rational or irrational, nothing stretches the imagination like the naming of towns.
How many people know the origin of Boot Jack, Traders Point, or Lickskillet? These three can be found in Marion County’s Pike Township, which is as good a place as any to look at our forerunner’s knack for naming their lands.
Boot Jack, now barely more than faint echoes of a blacksmith’s hammering, still labels the spot where 65th Street runs into old U.S. 52 (Lafayette Road).
Pike Township old-timers remember Boot Jack as a pinpoint of early activity centering around the smithy and carriage shop of German-born Louis Gass, the home of Dr. Geremiah Reade, and a toll-house manned by James Eudaly.
What is now old U.S. 52 was then a toll road known by some as the Lafayette Road, and by others as Jackson Highway.
The name Boot Jack could have several explanations. It might have been derived from the blacksmith trade that dominated the community.
The most likely explanation stems from the name’s definition. A boot jack is a device used for pulling boots off tired feet.
It consists of a board carved with a simple V-shaped notch that holds any size heel while the weary boot wearer pulls out his foot.
The corner of 65th and the toll road, one lifelong resident of the area pointed out, probably looked like the boot jack’s notch to some quick-witted settler.
Traders Point, nestled in a valley where old U.S. 52 crosses Eagle Creek, is possibly the oldest settlement in Pike Township. It dates back to the first half of the 19th century as a commercial center featuring a gristmill, stockyard, cooper shop, wagon shop, and three stores. Its population bobbed up and down around the two-dozen mark, and now numbers around 50. Traders Point may have gotten its name as a favorite place for dealings among the Indians, but a more likely explanation stems from the known function as a kind of pioneer shopping center.
Early Pike Township people seem to have preferred trading stock, grain, and produce for supplies at Traders Point, rather than travel the long road into Indianapolis. Hence the name.
Little more than the name is left at Lickskillet, a corner community at old U.S. 52 and Moore Road which in its heyday boasted four cabins clustered near School No. 12.
A name like Lickskillet could have countless origins, but among the most reasonable is an explanation offered by Mrs. Mamie Glidewell, Traders Point, who taught at the Lickskillet school before the turn of the century.
The people there were poor people, Mrs. Glidewell said, and made use of everything that had any food value at all.
A homespun jest about poverty or even a sarcastic comment from a traveler could have given the corner a permanent label.
Prominent neighbors of Boot Jack, Traders Point, and Lickskillet are Augusta and New Augusta. Augusta was laid out in 1832 by Daniel Boardman as a stopover town along the Michigan Road, which was mapped from Madison to Michigan City in the same year and comepleted within the decade.
Augusta was known in some quarters as Eck, apparently because the post office established there was named, for reasons unknown, the Eck Post Office.
It seems fairly certain that Augusta got its name from the road that brought it into being. The Michigan Road was engineered by the Augusta Gravel Road Company.
New Augusta sprouted up in the cornfields as Augusta Station, built to link Augusta with the Indianapolis and Lafayette Railroad that was put through in 1852, about 1 1/2 miles west of the Michigan Road.
Shortly after the Augusta Station was built, the land around it on both sides of the tracks, owned by Christopher Hornaday, was marked off in town lots.
The newly platted town picked up the name Hosbrook, from a member of the commission that marked off the town area, Perry Hosbrook.
The land carried two names until the town of New Augusta was officially founded in 1878, but traces of Hosbrook are still in evidence.
Buildings bear the name Hosbrook. Deeds require the Hosbrook location. A Prohibition-era bootlegger once got off free because he had been arrested on a warrant that listed him as a resident of New Augusta when it should’ve said Hosbrook.
Pike Township is not uncommon. Like other townships scattered across the country, some of its towns’ names are colorful, and some simple, but all have a story that’s hard to find and waiting to be told.
For instance, north of the Bob Shank Airport (Pike Plaza Parkway was constructed over the airport runway), there’s a place called Snacks. Who can explain that one? (I received a copy of this article from the late Maxine Stevens who worked for years for the Pike Township School District. Mrs. Stevens was instrumental in having an elementary school at the southwest corner of 56th Street and Moller Road named for Snacks. The photo of the Boot Jack livery is in the archives of the Pike Township Historical Society, located in New Augusta.)