page_title: Evansville, Indiana
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Evansville, Indiana / History
caption_attribution_description: English: 1927 Graham BB 1 Ton Dodge 4-cylinder engine Dodge transmission Top speed - 40 MPH On display at the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, Walcott, Iowa
context_page_description: Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana. The population was 117,429 at the 2010 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in Southern Indiana, and the 232nd-most populous city in the United States. It is the commercial, medical, and cultural hub of Southwestern Indiana and the Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky tri-state area, home to over 911,000 people. The 38th parallel crosses the north side of the city and is marked on Interstate 69.
  Situated on an oxbow in the Ohio River, the city is often referred to as the "Crescent Valley" or "River City". As a testament to the Ohio's grandeur, early French explorers named it La Belle Rivière. The area has been inhabited by various indigenous cultures for millennia, dating back at least 10,000 years. Angel Mounds was a permanent settlement of the Mississippian culture from 1000 AD to around 1400 AD. The European-American city was founded in 1812.
  Three NYSE companies are headquartered in Evansville, along with the global operations center for NYSE company Mead Johnson.
context_section_description: There was a continuous human presence in the area that became Evansville from at least 8,000 BC by Paleo-Indians. Archaeologists have identified several archaic and ancient sites in and near Evansville, with the most complex at Angel Mounds. This was built and occupied from about 900 A.D. to about 1600 A.D., just before the arrival of Europeans to North America.
  Following the abandonment of Angel Mounds between the years 1400 and 1450, tribes of the historic Miami, Shawnee, Piankeshaw, Wyandot, Delaware and other Native American peoples were known to be in the area. French hunters and trappers were among the first Europeans to come to the area, using Vincennes as a base of operations for fur trading. The land encompassing Evansville was formally relinquished by the Delaware in 1805 to General William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory.
  On March 27, 1812, Hugh McGary Jr. purchased about 441 acres and named it "McGary's Landing". In 1814, to attract more people, McGary renamed his village "Evansville" in honor of Colonel Robert Morgan Evans. Evansville incorporated in 1817 and was designated as the county seat on January 7, 1818. The county was named for Henry Vanderburgh, a deceased chief judge of the Indiana Territorial Supreme Court.
  Evansville became a thriving commercial town with a river trade, and the town began to expand outside of its original footprint. Evansville's west side was for many years cut off from the city's main part by Pigeon Creek and the factories that developed along it, making the creek an industrial corridor. The land comprising the former town of Lamasco was platted in 1837 and was annexed in 1870.
  Evansville's economy received a boost in the early 1830s when Indiana unveiled plans to build the longest canal in the world, a 400-mile ditch to connect the Great Lakes at Toledo, Ohio with the inland rivers at Evansville. The project was intended to open Indiana to commerce and improve transportation from New Orleans to New York City. The project bankrupted the state and was so poorly engineered that it would not hold water. By the time the Wabash and Erie Canal was finished in 1853, Evansville's first railroad, Evansville & Crawfordsville Railroad, was opened to Terre Haute. The expansion of railroads in this territory had made the canal obsolete. Only two flat barges ever made the entire trip. The canal basin at Fifth and Court street in downtown Evansville became the site of a new courthouse in 1891.
  The era of Evansville's greatest growth occurred in the second half of the 19th century, following the disruptions of the Civil War. The city was a major stop for steamboats along the Ohio River, and it was the home port for a number of companies engaged in trade via the river. Coal mining, manufacturing, and hardwood lumber was a major source of economic activity. By 1900 Evansville was one of the world's largest hardwood furniture centers, with 41 factories employing approximately 2,000 workers. Railroads eventually became more important and in 1887 the L&N Railroad constructed a bridge across the Ohio River. along with a major rail yard southwest of Evansville in Howell, which was annexed in 1916 and completed the city's counterclockwise march around the horseshoe bend.
  Throughout this period Evansville's main ethnic groups consisted of Protestant Scotch-Irish from the South, Catholic Irish coming for canal or railroad work, New England businessmen, Germans fleeing Europe after the 1848 revolutions, and freedmen from Western Kentucky. By the U.S. census of 1890 Evansville ranked as the 56th-largest urban area in the United States, but it was surpassed in population by other cities in the early 1900s. As the new century began, the city continued to develop to its eastern areas. Manufacturing also took off, particularly in the automobile and refrigeration industries.
  The Graham brothers, Ray, Robert, and Joseph, got their start with a successful glass factory in Evansville. After they sold it in 1907, the glass factory became Libbey-Owens-Ford.  In 1916, seeing the need for a dep
caption: 1927 Graham BB 1 Ton at the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum; Dodge 4-cylinder engine; Dodge transmission; Top speed - 40 MPH
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