PENDLETON — Thumbing through the photo book “Indiana’s Lost National Road,” readers are likely to encounter some familiar sights: the arched entrance to Riley Park, the marquee of the H.J. Ricks Centre for the Arts, the big blue Culver’s “Thank You, Farmers” barn east of town.
David Humphrey’s newest book captures Indiana’s section of U.S. 40, the Old National Road, in a paperback time capsule.
Nowadays, most travelers are not interested in the journey so much as they are the destination, David Humphrey said.
It’s one of the reasons many travelers don’t use older national highways to get places as much as they use the faster tracks, such as interstates, planes and trains.
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Humphrey, from Pendleton, is a photographer by heart. While he works as a special needs instructional assistant in the South Madison Community School District, much of his spare time is spent time taking photos, writing and creating.
The Madison Heights High School graduate recently released his fifth publication, a photo book entitled, “Images of Modern America, Indiana’s Lost National Road.”
The book takes readers on a photographic journey along old U.S. Highway 40 as it cuts east to west across the state, showing images of what is and what used to be.
The idea behind the book was to capture life along U.S. 40, to record the things people take for granted and the things most travelers no longer see since Interstate 70 cut its path through the state parallel to older, slower, U.S. 40.
While at a ball game in Knightstown a couple of years ago, Humphrey took a stroll down Highway 40 and noticed many older buildings boarded up.
He felt a book highlighting what has happened along the Highway 40, both good and bad, would make an interesting visual showcase.
Humphrey made at least five trips across the state from east to west along Highway 40, trying to capture images that caught his eye, pieces of history he hated seeing fade.
“I just think it’s a shame, that we’re not interested in history anymore,” Humphrey said.
He looked at his travels from a historic point of view and captured the images that helped tell the old and new story of Highway 40.
Humphrey tries to showcase the small towns along the route, hoping to capture history before it is gone.
Many of the photos of older buildings he took over the course of the past couple of years along Highway 40 are now gone, he said.
Humphrey is hoping people might see the book and get inspired to revitalize some of the areas along Highway 40, if they can.
Greenfield is prominently on display in the book with images of the courthouse, Riley Park and the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home.
While there are many fine communities along Highway 40 thriving like Greenfield, he said, the book also points out the places where history has truly become a thing of the past along the road.
Farmland, old barns, older homes, and beat-up towns, mark much of the landscape along Highway 40.
“Sometimes, progress, it isn’t always a good thing,” Humphrey said.
Among his favorite photos, Humphrey laughs when he thinks about the image of the Blue’s Brother’s Jake and Elwood, he captured outside of the Greenfield Music Center.
“That was something that was unique along U.S. 40,” he said. “I had not seen anything else like that.”
The book features over 120 color and black and white images Humphrey’s took over a three-year period. It’s split up into three chapters, Richmond to Dunreith, Knightstown to Indianapolis, and Plainfield to Terre Haute. The forward is written by Dan Carpenter.
Humphrey became a professional photographer in 1996, doing freelance photography, working for various newspapers in the state. He is married and lives in the Pendleton area with his wife and son.
