From Bean Blossom and through Brown County, State Road 45 is a narrow, shoulderless two-lane road that passes between the Morgan-Monroe State Forest and the Yellowwood State Forest.
As the road passes into Monroe County, the woods disappear and farms and homes begin to line the road. The road remains hilly and curvy until it reaches Bloomington, where it bypasses the city concurrent with State Road 46 and then State Road 37 and Interstate 69. West of Bloomington, shoulders appear on State Road 45 and its two lanes become wider. The road meanders with the rolling terrain until it meets and overlaps State Road 58, after which it is straight and flat until its terminus at US 231.
History
What would eventually become State Road (S.R.) 45 had its origins in the early state highway system. Roads 4 (later changed to 16) and 18 connected Rockport to Haysville via Jasper. This would become, in the October 1, 1926 statewide renumbering, the first segment of State Road 45.
By 1932, S.R. 45 was being extended north from Haysville to Loogootee, and a separate segment between Cincinnati in Greene County and Bloomington had also been completed. By 1940, the entire route from Rockport to Bloomington was complete, but when the Crane Naval Ammunition Depot was commissioned in 1941, the portion of the highway between Burns City and Cincinnati had to be rerouted to the west perimeter of the installation.
When U.S. 231 was extended north through Indiana in 1953, it was routed over S.R. 45 from Rockport to the S.R. 58 junction near Scotland. However, as with S.R. 43 from Spencer to Lafayette, which also carried U.S. 231, the Indiana State Highway Department (now INDOT) deleted much of the co-signed state route by 1979.
The deletion left the current segment along with a short, 5-mile section from Patronville to Rockport that acted as a connector to then-U.S. 231 (now State Road 161) and Owensboro, Kentucky. This southern section was decommissioned and turned over to the control of the city of Rockport (within the city limits) and Spencer County (outside of Rockport) in March 2001, about a year before U.S. 231 was rerouted onto the William H. Natcher Bridge.
The segment of S.R. 45 from Scotland to Bloomington was named for the late former Bloomington mayor and Indiana 8th District Congressman Frank X. McCloskey in 2004.[3]
A major construction project to widen the road to four lanes in Bloomington was completed in November 2012.[4]
US 231 / SR 58 near Crane
I-69 near Crane
SR 135 at Beanblossom
