Sometimes things go to according to plat. Sometimes not.

Early plat maps of Elkhart County, some never before seen by local surveyors, are on display in a temporary exhibit at the Elkhart County Historical Museum. The 170-year-old drawings tell some tales, including one about the city that never was.

Museum staff discovered the old plat records during a recent effort to inventory and find new housing for items relegated to storage at the facility. The maps have been organized into a new exhibit, "Mapping Elkhart County," which runs through March 5 and features plat maps from as early as 1832 of Elkhart, Goshen, Middlebury, Benton and other areas.

Recorded prominently on the map for downtown Elkhart is the name of city's first surveyor, George Crawford. Along with Crawford are the names of city fathers Havilah Beardsley and Philo Morehouse. Beardsley's two mills along on the near-north side of the river appear on the map as well. The southern boundary of the platted area is called Pigeon Street -- today known as Lexington Avenue. Other street names have endured, including Harrison, Franklin, Washington and High.

The maps reveal that downtown Elkhart and Goshen materialized much as their early plans called for, in a style similar to that of New England towns: Roads run east to west and north to south, creating uniform city blocks that sometimes surround a town square. Middlebury adhered closest to the style.

CITY THAT NEVER WAS

The plat for Dunlap, however, must have slid behind the engineer's desk and stayed there awhile.

Harrisburgh, as the region south of Elkhart was to be named, was platted in 1836 with an ambitious 1,450 or so parcels, laid out in similar fashion to Elkhart and Goshen, but on a much larger scale.

"Hans (Musser, Elkhart County survey technical coordinator) and I both looked at that and figured that was their planning, but somewhere along the way someone changed it," said Dennis Lyon, Elkhart County drainage technician.

The earliest maps available to Elkhart County surveyors -- until the 1836 map was found -- show the hilly region to already have developed to a far lesser extent than planned and in quite a different layout. Roads run at angles, some with severe curves. More than a few lots are larger than the standard 640 acres.

"I think it's just the way the contours of the land are. You don't know what they were thinking," Lyon said of later cartographers. The Elkhart County Survey Department's earliest maps show the area as it actually developed.

Another item in the exhibit, a color-coded 1856 U.S. map, includes the location of the city of Goshen but not that of Elkhart. According to museum curator Nick Hoffman, that's because at the time Goshen was a larger community than Elkhart and the county seat.

Examples of tools used by early surveyors complement the plat exhibit.

If you go What: “Mapping Elkhart County” exhibit Where: Elkhart County Historical museum, 304 W. Vistula St., Bristol Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; through March 5 Admission: free Information: 848-4322