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The Lincoln Highway marker before Town Hall · VERDICT: THE CLAIM DOCUMENTED, THE TOLL UNCOUNTED
The claim stands on a marker in front of Town Hall, 124 East Michigan Street — and no count stands behind it in any record reached. The configuration that earned the name is documented whole in the transportation file: the 1913 route ran straight across four tracks at grade at the town's east edge — two of the New York Central, one of the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana, one of the Chicago South Shore & South Bend — the interurban tracks lying a few feet lower than the steam road's; the town forced the cure by ordinance, limiting trains to eight miles an hour through the crossing until the railroads came to terms on the grade separation whose blind curves still introduce the town from the east. The superlative itself — most dangerous, largest toll on the coast-to-coast route — is the marker's own wording, a billing cast in metal by the highway's promoters; the number of victims that would test it stands in no record reached by the banked passes or this section (GAP-NC7-T1), and the marker record as searched carries no separate Death Crossing entry among the town's markers — the claim lives on the Lincoln Highway marker, not on a marker of its own. Verdict: the crossing's danger is documented by its engineering and its cure; the toll's rank is an untested superlative, printed as the marker's claim and no more. Settlers: the period coroner's files and the press of record, and the New York Central wreck files.
Sources:
- Transportation — the marker's wording verbatim, the configuration, the eight-mile ordinance and the cure; GAP-NC7-T1 as banked.
- The Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org), the New Carlisle marker set as searched for this section — no separate Death Crossing entry returned.