Partying Hard in Bucktown

It is hard to imagine that the tiny, quiet, well-kept hamlet of Wheeling was once a bubbling little town. Wheeling of 2020 has no businesses, no school, and a 'maybe' on a church. Those of us in the 50-60 year old range may recall an arcade in the storefront of the two-story building that once graced the northwest corner of the intersection of Wheeling Pike and Eaton-Wheeling Pike. South is Muncie, West is Jonesboro and East is Eaton. Not exactly a hub of humanity. In an earlier time, the town was a fair amount livelier as described in this commentary in the Fairmount News of 28 May 1891.

In the old quaint village of Wheeling, consisted of clapboard houses and rickety hen coops reposes a suburb known as Bucktown. This Bucktown also has a very commodious saloon known as the Growler. And many are the citizens that rush this self same Growler, where whiskey runs free as the waters on the beautiful Mississinewa and is dished out to the young and old in any shape or quantity. Free for all fights are engaged in freely without extra charge. Dances are frequent, and can-cans are by no means a new feature. It looks to repectable citizens from a stump near by, that such a nuisance ought not to be tolerated in a decent locality. "But sich is life."

I am still stuck on the fact that Wheeling had a 'suburb'.