also known as driftwood river

Tell you a little something about Sugar Creek, the darling stream of Central Indiana.

It's waters take form south of the farm town Markleville and steadily work their way south and west as you can imagine all do in the Hoosier State.

After passing through New Palestine, it runs just west of downtown Boggstown and then east of Needham, where an old mill sits sunk underwater. Several miles down is the site of Smiley's Mill, built around 1820 by John Smiley, first sheriff of Johnson County.

Along it's way, Sugar Creek gathers strength from it's dirty cousin, Young's Creek. And with a rejuvenated pace, it flows toward a union with the hearty Big Blue River in Edinburgh. The progeny is the East Fork of the White River, on which Columbus -- once voted the 6th greatest architectural city in the nation -- was built.

From there, the water sweeps westward toward the famed Wabash. Now the Wabash, you may know, is the final major tributary to the Ohio before the Ohio pours into Twain's Mississippi.

Though not much used today, Sugar Creek once powered a handful of mills vital to the settlers living on it. A little ways up from the banks, at the foot of weather worn headstones, those same settlers now rest in weed filled cemeteries. Meanwhile their children's grandchildren's great grandchildren still toil over the land surrounding the pretty little waterway.

So you see how Hoosier sweat and tears come to carry fertile soil all the way down to New Orleans and on into the Gulf.