A vibrant manufacturing city in Northern Indiana, Elkhart is billed as the capital of two very different products. First up, this is the RV Capital of the World, with 80% of all American RVs manufactured here. You can find out about this heritage at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, which has a superb museum. Since …
Named for a Native American princess, the daughter of Shawnee Chief Elkhart, Mishawaka is a city on the St. Joseph River, just upstream from South Bend. The river, feeding Lake Michigan, helped make Mishawaka an industrial center in the 19th century, known for wool, rubber, agricultural windmills, as well as peppermint, which thrived in the …
Just 15 minutes northeast of downtown Indianapolis, Lawrence is a fast-growing city that was associated with a U.S. Army post for much of its history. Founded in 1906, Fort Benjamin Harrison was part of an early effort to consolidate an assortment of state militias into a national army. The base closed down in 1991, and …
The city of Columbus lies around 40 miles south of Indianapolis and has a worldwide reputation for its mid-Century Modernist architecture. In the 1950s the industrialist J. Irwin Miller set up a foundation in Columbus to pay the fees of architects who designed new public buildings in the city. This has left Columbus with many …
Known to its pals as “Jeff”, this city of 49,000 sits across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. Jeffersonville can trace its roots to the 1780s, and took on the name of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, the year he became President. Steamboat-building was a big industry in Jeffersonville in the 19th and early 20th century, …
The most densely populated city in Indiana is dominated in every sense by Purdue University, founded in 1869 and featuring a leafy campus adorned with solemn red brick buildings. There are around 50,000 students enrolled at Purdue, endowing West Lafayette with a youthful sense of fun, a lot of diversity, cutting-edge culture and lots of …
East of Gary and home to the Port of Indiana, Portage is an industrial city on Lake Michigan. While the steel industry slump in the 1980s affected Portage like other South Shore communities, the economy has been bolstered by the constant growth of the Port of Indiana (built in 1961) and manufacturing facilities like a …
After a flurry of annexation and construction in the last few decades, the population of this suburban city stands at 45,000, ten times what it was in 1990. And yet the story of Westfield goes back some 200 years, to the 1830s when Quakers relocated here from the Carolinas. Opposed to slavery, these settlers are …
In the first decades of the 19th century, before the locks were built in Louisville, New Albany was one of the largest cities in the Midwest and a vital stop on the Underground Railroad. This growth was powered by shipyards building steamboats, and New Albany had a high reputation for the workmanship of its vessels. …
A city known for its preserved architecture and early recording industry, Richmond is in east central Indiana, right on the boundary with Ohio. The early history of Richmond is tied to the National Road, which, after opening in 1833, brought many immigrant families through the city and Wayne County on their long journey west. In …