22-May-2018 -- One of the pleasures of this project is that it often teaches me new things. A few years ago a visit to a Degree Confluence Point in northeastern Utah led me to discover that there’s an oil industry there. And today I discovered that there’s also an oil industry in this portion of southern Indiana.

Having spent the previous night in Evansville, Indiana, I first drove to the historic town of New Harmony, to photograph a ‘labyrinth’ there. I then headed south on a series of rural roads (one of which had the odd name of “Crab Orchard Road”) towards the point. After negotiating some muddy dirt roads, and crossing a railroad track, I ended up near the southern end of a small lake, just 0.16 miles from the point. From examining satellite imagery, I thought that I could hike around the southern end of the lake from here, but I was mistaken, because I discovered that a wide creek ran southwards from the end of the lake, and there seemed to be no easy way to cross this creek.

So I then returned to my rental car and tried to find a route that approached the point from the southeast, bypassing the lake. I was able to find a farm road that passed 0.3 miles south of the point. I was prepared to walk across the farm field from there - but I saw a farmer driving tilling or harvesting equipment nearby, and didn’t want to bother him. So I ended up counting this as an incomplete visit.