Establishment and early history There has been a continuous human presence in the area that became Evansville from at least 8000 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 AD 900 to about 1600, just before the arrival of Europeans to North America. Following the abandonment of Angel Mounds between 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. The city of Evansville, Indiana was founded in 1812 and incorporated in 1817. It is situated on a
Meander in the
Ohio River, and is often referred to as the "Crescent Valley" or "River City". On March 27, 1812,
Hugh McGary Jr. purchased about 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.
18th and 19th centuries Evansville's economy received a boost in the early 1830s when Indiana unveiled plans to build the
longest canal in the world, a 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. 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
1890 census, 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.
20th and 21st centuries 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 dependable truck, the Graham brothers entered the truck chassis business. Evansville was home to Graham Brothers Trucks from then until 1929. The dependability of Graham trucks was due in part to their use of Torbensen internal gear drive rear axles. In 1921, after the death of both Dodge brothers, Graham Brothers started selling 1.5-ton pickups through Dodge dealers. (Dodge did not manufacture trucks at the time). These vehicles had Graham chassis and some Dodge parts. Dodge Brothers bought a controlling interest in Graham Brothers in 1925, picking up the rest in 1926. The city saw exponential growth in the early twentieth century with the production of lumber and the manufacturing of furniture. By 1920, Evansville had more than two dozen furniture companies. In the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, city leaders attempted to improve Evansville's transportation position and successfully lobbied to be on the Chicago-to-Miami "Dixie Bee Highway" (
U.S. Highway 41). A bridge was built across the Ohio River in 1932 and in that same decade steps were taken to develop an airport. But the
Ohio River flood of 1937 covered 500 city blocks in Evansville, resulting in a major crisis. Because of this, the city was placed under martial law. With steamboats less necessary to the local economy, city and federal officials responded to the flood and its destruction by constructing more and higher levees: construction that penned and hid the Ohio River behind a barrier of earthen berms and concrete walls. During
World War II, Evansville was a major center of industrial production which helped revive the regional economy after the
Great Depression. A huge shipyard complex was constructed on the riverfront east of St. Joseph Avenue for the production of oceangoing LSTs (
Landing Ship-Tanks). The Evansville Shipyard was the nation's largest inland producer of LSTs. The Plymouth factory was converted into a plant which turned out "bullets by the billions," and many other companies switched over to the manufacture of war material. In 1942, an aircraft factory was constructed adjacent to the airport north of the city for the manufacture of the Republic P-47D fighter aircraft, the
legendary P-47 Thunderbolt. Evansville produced a total of 6,242 P-47s, almost half of the P-47s made nationally during the war. After the war, Evansville's manufacturing base of automobiles, household appliances, and farm equipment benefited from growing post-war demand. A growing housing demand also caused residential development to leap north and east of the city. However, between 1955 and 1963, a nationwide recession hit Evansville. Among other closures, Servel (which produced refrigerators) went out of business and Chrysler ended its local operations. The economy was saved from near total collapse by 28 businesses that moved into the area, including
Whirlpool,
Alcoa, and
General Electric. On December 6, 2022, in recognition of the city's massive production efforts during World War II, it was announced that Evansville had been designated Indiana's American
World War II Heritage City by the
National Park Service. ==Geography==