The Dunkirk & Moore Pike: There’s gold in that thar…gravel?

By: Ted Shideler

D.B. Moore was a Delaware County farmer and an early advocate for free public roads. A resident of rural Niles Township, Moore was deeply suspicious of big-city big-wigs and their big-time motives! That’s part of what makes his story -and the story of the Dunkirk & Moore Pike– interesting. That, and gold. Gold makes everything more intriguing.

The Dunkirk & Moore Pike, as it appeared in Griffing, Gordon, & Company’s 1887 atlas of Delaware County.

Early rural roads were terrible. Turnpikes -privately-owned toll roads that used their funds to pay for upkeep and maintenance- tried to solve that. A whopping eleven of them radiated out of Muncie by 1880! In 1883, fifteen of Delaware County’s turnpikes collected $83,714.68 in tolls, which was $53,000 more than it cost to maintain them. That tidy profit infuriated the farmers who used the turnpikes most, so a spirited debate erupted in the newspapers about their utility. Eventually, county officials began to buy up the old turnpike companies.

D.B. Moore’s writings on the topic were frequent components of the editorial pages. “When the people of Delaware County realize that they have some rights that Muncie lawyers and shysters are bound to respect,” he wrote, “we can then hope to improve our country and move on in the grand march of progression, but just as long as farmers will allow that class of men to think and act for them and dictate to them, just so long will enterprise be checked.”

D.B. Moore’s gravel pit, as it appeared on December 20, 2022.

D.B. Moore was not just a friend of the downtrodden farmer: he had a vested interest in building public roads, perhaps since he owned a quarry from which stone could be used to pave them. As local officials floated taking control of Delaware County’s turnpikes, Moore proposed that they pay for one that connected his property to nearby Dunkirk. After contentious debate towards the proper assessed value of Moore’s road, commissioners finally agreed to his pitch, paying Jon T. Gardner and John Linville to build Dunkirk & Moore Pike, sometimes known as the Moore Free Gravel Road, for $4,032.

Given the controversy surrounding the assessed value of the road he intended to use his gravel to build, it should come as no surprise that Moore later became a candidate for County Assessor in 1900. The following year, he sold 140 acres of his land to Edward Weinman for $7,000 but continued to operate the gravel quarry. That’s where the real intrigue starts.

Pyrite. Image courtesy Wikimedia user James Petts under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

In 1901, D.B. Moore raced to the big city with mineral specimens he’d found in the gravel from his pit: Moore was sure that the samples he found were gold, and needed Muncie’s highfalutin’ professionals to tell him if he had. So much for being suspicious of those big-city big-wigs!

A jeweler advised that what Moore had discovered was nothing but common pyrite- fool’s gold. Nevertheless, D.B. Moore was undeterred and took his samples to Congressman George Q. Cromer, who offered to send the minerals to the federal assay, or mineral-testing, office.

Eventually, a reporter from The Muncie Evening Times tracked Moore down. The two sprinted to Andrews Drug Store in downtown Muncie to perform some tests. The mineral samples were submerged in hydrochloric acid and acetic acid, chemicals which dissolved the rocks but left the metal embedded into them intact. Subsequent tests disintegrated silver, iron, and copper, but left the mystery materials undisturbed.

The Dunkirk & Moore Pike about two miles west of Dunkirk, as it appeared on December 20, 2022.

Moore was steadfast in his belief that he’d struck gold and was elated by his luck, just as you or I would be if we discovered that the ornamental pear tree out front seemed to bloom with winning Hoosier Lottery scratch-offs. Unfortunately, Moore’s fastidiousness in using his gravel to maintain the road that took his name may have actually decreased his wealth, if it was really gold he’d found: As The Muncie Evening Times put it, “How much gold, if gold it is, has been spread over the roads, cannot be estimated. There has been no previous mineral formation discovered in the county but this does not dampen the ardor of Mr. Moore.”

The Moore And Dunkirk Pike as it appeared on December 20, 2022.

Accounts of a palatial estate in Niles Township are absent from the newspaper, so it seems likely that he didn’t strike gold in his quarry after all. In fact, there’s little mention of Moore after his adventure. In 1905, he applied to receive black bass from the Indiana Fish Commission to stock what was, by that point, known as Moore’s Lake. He died three years later, at the age of 69 and was buried in Black Cemetery near the Muncie Drag Strip.

D.B. Moore’s free gravel road, now known as East County Road 1200-North, has outlived the man behind it for more than a century. Moore’s segment of the road is about 3.5 miles long and begins near his property at the corner of 1200 and North County Road 550-East. A drive along it is typical of traveling down any other county road.

Niles Township’s Huffman school on the Dunkirk & Moore Pike. Photo taken April 17, 2021.

Niles Township’s Hufman schoolhouse sits half a mile west of Moore’s gravel pit on the old pike. Samuel Selvey deeded the township a section of his land to build a schoolhouse there in 1879 after it was relocated from a plot on George Huffman’s property.

The school closed after the 1914-1915 term, and its students were probably sent to Dunkirk. Moore’s Pike extends another three miles past the schoolhouse as it makes its way towards Dunkirk. Unfortunately, none of my inspections of its pavement over the years have yielded any riches.

The entrance to Frank Merry Park. Photo taken December 20, 2022.

If you fancy yourself a modern-day forty-niner and want to see Moore’s Pike for yourself, start by taking IN-167 from Albany to the Family Dollar in Dunkirk and make a left onto what’s signed as Eaton Pike, or East County Road 1200-North in Delaware County. From there, dig your way west until you reach North County Road 550-East. Want to check Moore’s old quarry? Go a third of a mile south of the pike and prepare your pick-axe, scuba gear, and membership card: in 1955, Moore’s old pit became part of the privately-owned Frank Merry Park.