129th: The Worst Street in Whiting-Robertsdale History
…and it “only” took three decades to repair

John Hmurovic
May 2020

It was the area’s leading producer of flat tires. It had, according to a writer for the Hammond Times, “more holes than a prairie dog colony.” Yet, it took more than 30 years to fix 129th Street, the top contender for the title of the worst street in Whiting-Robertsdale history.

You probably need to be old enough and to have experienced the road yourself, to fully appreciate just how bad 129th Street was. Those who survived it, could tell you their stories. “If you really would like to take a roller-coaster ride,” an anonymous writer to the editor of the Hammond Times wrote in 1962, “try 129th Street from White Oak to Calumet Avenue. Just tighten your safety belts so you don’t go through the roof or floor of your car.”

In the late 1950s, this sign stood near 129th and White Oak, warning motorists about the dangers of traveling on 129th Street. “Protect your life and the lives of others,” the sign ominously warned. This is a 1959 photo from the Hammond Times. — In the late 1950s, this sign stood near 129th and White Oak, warning motorists about the dangers of traveling on 129th Street. “Protect your life and the lives of others,” the sign ominously warned. This is a 1959 photo from the *Hammond Times.*

The 41 Outdoor Theater was located on the northwest corner of 129th and Calumet Avenue. This is an ad from late 1960.

The section of 129th between Indianapolis Boulevard and White Oak Avenue was the “good” part of the road. If you continued beyond that, toward Calumet Avenue, you were venturing into a minefield of “car-jolting potholes,” as another writer put it. Another claimed that small cars were in danger of “disappearing in some of those holes,” which was just a slight exaggeration. It was “a slag-cinder road, full of chuck-holes and bumps and (in winter) ice and puddles. It is traversable, but not at high speed,” according to a 1962 description.

Jim Hoelzel grew up in the Marktown area of East Chicago, which is on the opposite end of 129th. In 2014, Chuck Kosalko was one of the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society volunteers who interviewed him about his memories. Part of the discussion was about 129th Street.

Kosalko
You probably remember the old 129th Street? It was called Burma Road, because it was just huge potholes and dips. You never drove through there more than ten miles an hour.

Hoelzel
Right. Sometimes if you’re going at night, you misjudge and put an axel out or something. It was such a nice convenient route for us, right there from Marktown. My memories of going down that road were to get to 41 Outdoor Theater. In the summer, we’d decide to go to the theater, and then you wanted to hurry up and get there, because it might have been a last-minute decision. You saw that the sun’s going down and the movie’s going to start.

Kosalko
It always seemed like…Oh, it doesn’t look very far. But it would take you forever.

Hoelzel
Right. And you probably would have done better just doing the loop around, by the time you would have made it. It was always, ”OK, is it worth saving the distance?”

That was always the question for drivers who wanted to get between Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard. Should you risk damage to your car by taking 129th Street, or should you go two or three miles out of your way and take 121st Street to get to your destination?

How did the road get so bad? In its defense, it was not designed to be a major east-west street for general automobile use. Standard Oil used the road for truck traffic, so did the H. Bairstow Company. Bairstow hauled slag, a stony waste product created in the steel-making process. It was the main slag hauler for Chicago’s U.S. Steel South Works plant in the 1950s, and it dumped the slag at its facility at 129th Street and Calumet Avenue in piles so high that they were known as Bairstow Mountain.

After Bairstow Mountain was leveled, the Lost Marsh golf course was built there. The 129th Street entrance to that facility is now a paved four-lane road. But for many years, the Bairstow trucks, carrying heavy loads, contributed to the creation of a street that became legendary for being so bad. Truck tires, bearing heavy loads, pounded the potholes, making them larger with every direct hit.

Despite the fact that the road was a mile-plus of potholes, 129th Street was frequently used. Motorists were lured to it because they didn’t want to travel the extra miles, and extra time, it took to get to 121st Street, the closest street that coul… — Despite the fact that the road was a mile-plus of potholes, 129th Street was frequently used. Motorists were lured to it because they didn’t want to travel the extra miles, and extra time, it took to get to 121st Street, the closest street that could get them between Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard, the major north-south routes in Whiting-Robertsdale. This photo from the *Hammond Times* was taken in 1966.

Turning lanes are commonplace these days, but in 1941 they were an innovative traffic control idea. The first in Whiting-Robertsdale was installed that year at 129th and Indianapolis Boulevard to help relieve the huge traffic mess at that intersecti… — Turning lanes are commonplace these days, but in 1941 they were an innovative traffic control idea. The first in Whiting-Robertsdale was installed that year at 129th and Indianapolis Boulevard to help relieve the huge traffic mess at that intersection. Also new was the left turn traffic signal. This *Hammond Times* photo looks south on Indianapolis Boulevard to the intersection of 129th Street. The houses on the right were in the Stiglitz Park neighborhood of Whiting, which were destroyed by the massive 1955 explosion at the Standard Oil refinery, just across the street from these homes.

Among the earliest proponents of improving the street was Whiting Police Chief Richard Springgate. His reason was traffic jams. The Whiting Police had to deal with a constant headache caused by traffic at the intersection of 129th and Indianapolis Boulevard. The Standard Oil Refinery employed thousands in those days, and there were many thousands more working nearby at the steel mills in East Chicago, and down Indianapolis Boulevard at the Sinclair Refinery which was located on the edge of the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal. Up until the late 1940s, people often walked to work or took the bus. But as more and more gradually owned cars and took them to work, the streets proved inadequate to handle the traffic, especially at shift-change time at the refineries and mills. By the mid-1950s, it was estimated that 43,000 vehicles crossed that intersection every hour.

The roads in Whiting-Robertsdale were also crowded throughout the day and on weekends, because up until the mid-1950s, there was no Indiana Toll Road and no expressway to divert the traffic on its way to and from Chicago, or up to the lakefront. Indianapolis Boulevard and Calumet Avenue, the two major north-south streets in the community, had no connecting east-west street between 121st in Robertsdale and Gostlin Street in North Hammond, a distance of three miles.

Streets which did connect, like 121st and 119th, became crowded with traffic. Indianapolis Boulevard was a traffic mess. “On Sunday afternoons we would watch the traffic coming from Michigan, or going back to Chicago, bumper to bumper, starting around four or five in the afternoon,” said Leilani Suchanuk, who spent many summer days in the 1950s, visiting her friends who lived near 129th and the Boulevard. She remembers sitting on the porch with them, watching the traffic. “Traffic was backed up like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like how expressways are now. And that went on for a couple hours.”

Police Chief Springgate wanted to find a way to relieve that congestion, and his idea was to make 129th Street a
major connecting street between Indianapolis Boulevard and Calumet Avenue. The idea was brought up as early as 1944, but the real birth of the movement to get the road repaired came in 1947, when the Lake Area Safety Council of the Chicago Motor Club began an effort to win support for the proposal.

Because traffic was so bad at 129th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard, people looked for shortcuts. Larry Little of Schererville tried to cut through Standard Oil property near that intersection. It was a bad idea. His car got stuck in a sea of tar.… — Because traffic was so bad at 129th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard, people looked for shortcuts. Larry Little of Schererville tried to cut through Standard Oil property near that intersection. It was a bad idea. His car got stuck in a sea of tar. This *Hammond Times* photo is from 1949.

The challenge to get the street improved was not Whiting’s. The section that needed improvement was in Robertsdale, which meant Hammond needed to back the proposal. In 1947, Mayor G. Bertram Smith was supportive, but his administration was focused on improvements to Hohman Avenue in downtown Hammond. The city preferred for the state to bear the expense of a new street, but the state showed no interest in a suggestion to make 129th Street an alternate state route. Standard Oil also threw cold water on the proposed improvement, opposing any inclusion of its property in the plan.

The Chicago Motor Club’s Lake Area Council pushed forward, but new problems emerged. Hammond city officials called the plan “unworkable and inadequate.” The city could not afford the $81,000 price tag, and also felt that the road as proposed, a two-lane street, was inadequate. In 1948, newly elected mayor, Vernon Anderson, said the road needed to be four lanes, needed to be open to truck traffic, and needed funding from the state to become reality.

Another idea emerged at that time. Why stop at Calumet Avenue? Why not build 129th all the way to the state border? Take it along the southern edge of Wolf Lake and connect it to Chicago’s street system. The most popular idea was to connect it to 130th Street in Chicago, which would provide a direct link to the Ford Assembly plant, the Lake Calumet Harbor, and the Calumet Expressway on the Illinois side, and two major oil refineries, the steel mills of East Chicago, and other industry on the Indiana side. It could become an important industrial highway.

The cross-state plan gained momentum in 1954, when after three years of negotiations the Anderson administration won the support of the ten landowners on the two-mile long stretch from White Oak to the state line. Among the owners, Standard Oil and Bairstow both agreed to grant a right-of-way for the improved street, as did NIPSCO,
Dust Motor Service, the 41 Outdoor Theater, and the Shedd Estate. This will be, Mayor Anderson said, “the greatest single traffic improvement in the Calumet Region in the last 50 years.”

In 1954, representatives of five major property owners on 129th Street agreed to grant a right-of-way to the city of Hammond so that 129th Street could be improved. They are, from left to right: Alex Manta, Hammond 41 Outdoor Theater; Bud Bairstow, … — In 1954, representatives of five major property owners on 129th Street agreed to grant a right-of-way to the city of Hammond so that 129th Street could be improved. They are, from left to right: Alex Manta, Hammond 41 Outdoor Theater; Bud Bairstow, H. Bairstow Company; J.J. Haines, the Shedd family estate; Hammond Mayor Vernon Anderson; Dean Mitchell, NIPSCO; and Arthur Endres, Standard Oil Company.

By opening up a new route into Chicago, it would not only relieve traffic congestion at 129th and Indianapolis Boulevard, but also the bottleneck of traffic on Indianapolis Boulevard as it entered Chicago near 106th Street. Whiting, Hammond and Chicago seemed to be on board for the plan. All that was needed was help from the state. State Highway Commission member Virgil Smith said it would receive the highest priority, but tried to control expectations by saying it may take “a year or so” for actual work to begin on the road.

The year passed. The Anderson administration in Hammond City Hall gave way to the Edward Dowling
administration in 1956. In his first year, Dowling was told that the state hoped for federal funding for the project. Even if the federal government did not help, he was told, the state would fund the project. Road work, they said, could start by mid-summer of 1956, and could be completed by early 1957.

There were encouraging signs. Later in 1956, Governors George Craig of Indiana and William Stratton of Illinois announced they would work together on two major road projects. The largest would be an expressway along Hammond’s southern end that would connect to the Tri-State Expressway in Illinois. That one eventually materialized. It is now known as the Borman Expressway. The second project was the 129th Street link. By late 1959, Illinois had plans to develop 130th Street into an expressway with limited access, and to build an overpass across Wolf Lake that would connect with 129th on the Indiana side.

Late in 1953, the plan was to extend 129th Street into Illinois and create a super-industrial highway that would put the Ford Assembly plant and the Lake Calumet Harbor on the Illinois side, on the same road as the oil refineries and steel mills of … — Late in 1953, the plan was to extend 129th Street into Illinois and create a super-industrial highway that would put the Ford Assembly plant and the Lake Calumet Harbor on the Illinois side, on the same road as the oil refineries and steel mills of Whiting and East Chicago. In Illinois, the super-highway would connect to what is now the Bishop Ford Freeway at 130th Street. The 1950s and 60s was a time of grand road plans, and the 129th Street project was a piece of that plan. The Indiana Toll Road is also on this map. Its eventual route at Wolf Lake changed, but the road was built. Other parts of the plan also became reality, such as the road which is now known as the Borman Expressway, and the Cline Avenue extension into East Chicago. But the 129th Street project never materialized.

But in Indiana, progress was stalled. “Not one step has been taken by the state on the 129th Street project,” said A.G. Giannini, Mayor Dowling’s city engineer in 1959. In the meantime, Standard Oil and the city of Hammond filled some of the potholes and tried to make the street passable. All of their work, however, was designed to be temporary as they waited for a permanent fix from the state.

Back and forth it went. Signs of hope were always followed by long periods of nothing happening. In 1962, the State Highway Commission recommended that the connection to Chicago be built, and that 129th Street be designated as an extension of State Road 912. The idea stalled, in part, because federal funding to finance the project required that a 700-foot overpass be built across the railroad tracks just east of Schrage Avenue. Standard Oil objected. Building the overpass would require them to move some of their underground pipelines, a very costly project.

It took five years to resolve the overpass issue. By that time, the newest problem was the need to meet state highway standards. Instead of a sixty-foot right-of-way, there needed to be a 90-foot right-of-way, with a divider in the middle. Management from the refinery, now named Amoco, again objected, saying a wider road would come too close to their storage tanks along 129th Street.

That was in 1967. With an election approaching that year, Mayor Dowling still expressed optimism. “Construction will begin next year,” he said. His primary opponent in the race used the 129th Street delays against him. Joseph Klen, who grew up in Whiting and knew the area around 129th Street as Strawberry Island, said he would get the project done. Klen won the Democratic primary race against Dowling and became mayor in 1968.

By that time, plans for a superhighway connecting to Illinois had fallen to the wayside. Robertsdale City Councilman Joseph Bercik spoke in favor of the Illinois connection at a public meeting in 1969, but the state was moving ahead with other plans. Instead, what was being considered was to connect 129th Street to the proposed Cline Avenue project. The idea was to extend an improved, limited-access Cline Avenue through East Chicago, and connect it to
129th Street at Indianapolis Boulevard. With or without the Cline Avenue connection, a State Highway official said in 1970, that everything was on track for an improved 129th Street by 1974.

The “same old axel-buster,” is how 129th Street was described in the caption of this 1974 photo in The Times. If the road’s condition changed at all in the 1950s, 1960s, and the first half of the 1970s, it changed for the worse. — The “same old axel-buster,” is how 129th Street was described in the caption of this 1974 photo in *The Times.* If the road’s condition changed at all in the 1950s, 1960s, and the first half of the 1970s, it changed for the worse.

In 1974, Mayor Klen was still working on funding, and motorists were still unhappy with the street. “Our alleys are in better shape than 129th Street,” wrote Mr. & Mrs. J.A. Phillips to The Times in August 1974. Meanwhile, a feasibility study said it would cost Amoco three-million dollars to relocate their pipelines if Cline Avenue was made to connect with 129th Street. That spelled the end of that idea. “Every time you turn around, it seems like there’s one more catch,” Hammond City Engineer Tom Conley said.

By 1975, time ran out for Klen, who lost his bid for re-nomination as mayor to fellow Democrat Edward Raskosky. The road did not get built during his time in office, but near the very end of his term most of the pieces were in place. In his very last week in office, it was announced that the city received approval to move
forward with engineering designs and environmental studies for the $1.3-million-dollar project.

It was 1977, before funding for the project was secured. Improving just over a mile of 129th Street would cost $1.3-million-dollars, with the federal government paying 70-percent of the cost, and the city and state picking up the rest.

It was November 1978, when decades of hopes, dreams and promises finally turned into reality. The Bihlman Asphalt Company of East Chicago began work on a four-lane 129th Street between Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard. It was September 1979, when the project was completed. From the time it was first endorsed by the Lake Area Safety Council of the Chicago Motor Club, it took “just” 32 years to fix the worst street in Whiting-Robertsdale history.