|
|
About Crawfordsville Crawfordsville is a city in Montgomery County, Indiana, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 15,243. The city is the county seat of Montgomery County. Crawfordsville and the unincorporated county areas attached to it are collectively referred to as Union Township. In 1813 Williamson Dunn, Henry Ristine, and Major Ambrose Whitlock noted that the site of present-day Crawfordsville was ideal for settlement, surrounded by deciduous forest and potentially arable land, with water provided by a nearby creek, later named Sugar Creek. They returned a decade later to find at least one cabin built. In 1821, William and Jennie Offield had built a cabin on a little creek, later to be known as Offield Creek, four miles southwest of the future site of Crawfordsville.
Major Whitlock laid out the town in March 1823. Crawfordsville was named in honor of Colonel William H. Crawford, who was the cabinet officer who had issued Whitlock's commission as Receiver of Public Lands. It was successfully incorporated as a town in 1834, following a failed attempt three years earlier.
In November 1832, Wabash College was founded in Crawfordsville as "The Wabash Teachers Seminary and Manual Labor College". Today, it is one of only four remaining all-male liberal arts colleges in the country, and has a student body of around 900. On December 18, 1833, the Crawfordsville Record carried a paid announcement of the opening of Crawfordsville High School.
The city grew in size and amenities, adding such necessities as a bank and fire department. It gained status as a city in 1865, when Indiana granted its charters.
In 1862, Joseph F. Tuttle, after whom Tuttle Grade School was named in 1906 and Tuttle Middle School was named in 1960, became President of Wabash College and served for 30 years. "He was an eloquent preacher, a sound administrator and an astute handler of public relations." Joseph Tuttle, together with his administrators, worked to improve relations in Crawfordsville between "Town and Gown".
In 1880, prominent local citizen Lew Wallace produced Crawfordsville's most famous literary work, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, a historical novel dealing with the beginnings of the Christianity in the Mediterranean world. Perhaps more crucial for Indiana's basketball-oriented culture, both the first official basketball game in the state (Crawfordsville versus Lafayette, March 16, 1894) and the first official intercollegiate basketball game (Wabash versus Purdue, also in 1894) occurred at the city's YMCA.
In 1882 one of the first Rotary Jails in the country opened. The jail is now a museum and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The beginning of 20th century marked important steps for Crawfordsville, as Culver Union Hospital and the Carnegie Library were built in 1902. Culver moved from its original location near downtown in 1984 and was renamed St. Clare Medical Center in 2000. The Carnegie Library is being reverted to a local museum and the public library has since moved across the street. In 1911, Crawfordsville High School (motto: Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve) was founded, and promptly won the state's first high school basketball title. Crawfordsville's major employer for much of the century, commercial printer RR Donnelley, began operations in Crawfordsville in 1922. Recent history has held few nationally noteworthy events for the city, but much internal change. Nucor Steel, Alcoa CSI, Raybestos Products Company, Pace Dairy Foods and Golden Books all created factories in or near Crawfordsville which provided employment to much of the population. Wabash College won the Division III NCAA basketball title in 1982. In 1998 the state began a proposed project to widen U.S. 231, in an attempt to ease intrastate travel flow. |
|