The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1930–1964 · THE DESIGNATION'S OWN HISTORY
what came before the number, and what the number had been. Before: nothing with a number. The five 1917 Main Market Roads are all accounted for without this corridor (see the auto-trail article for the accounting); the 1927 numbering left the road unnumbered; and no pre-1930 predecessor designation was found in any record reached — the road the state numbered in 1930 was a county road until late that year, the verdict stated at map-and-negative-search strength, its strengthening settler the 1920/1923/1926 commission plates themselves (gap G-W2R-8). The number itself had a prior life: before the 1926 renumbering, SR 23 ran in Jay County, from SR 13 north of Pennville to SR 21 north of Portland — a November 1923 newspaper notice names that course — so the 23 on North Liberty's road is a reassignment, not a first use.
The road's own course, on the state's log (Reference Post Book naming, carried): it begins at SR 10 at mile 0.000, crosses SR 8 (4.021), US 30 at Grovertown (10.826), US 6 at Walkerton (18.542, concurrent to 18.678), SR 4 at 24.442, and the US 20/31 parkway (35.697–35.803), ending at the Michigan line and M-62 at 50.871 — a 50.871-mile road. Its northward extension past South Bend prints with its pair unmerged, now numbered for the register: Conflict C109: the extension toward the state line is dated 1950 in the route-description record and 1951The extension was not paved until 1963–64 (retrospective reporting, 2026), a thirteen-year gap between designation and pavement that belongs in any account of the road's north end. In town, the road's street name prints as its own small conflict. Conflict C108: the Reference Post Book names SR 23's arms "North Main Street" north of the junction and "South State Street" south of it, while the National Register nomination treats the road as Main Street throughout the district. Both print; and the tempting etymology — that State Street was named for the state road — is recorded here expressly as NOT printed as fact: no source reached makes that claim.
Principal sources: INDOT Reference Post Book (July 2016) via AARoads (secondary carrier); the Hancock Democrat, 8 November 1923 (snippet); INDOT Commissioner's History page (the 1917 roads' fates); 2026 retrospective reporting (snippet strength).