Welcome to Seymour!

The first settler on the land that is now Seymour was James Shields who brought his family here in 1816 and built on the property which is now the old city cemetery. In 1820, he received a land grant for the ground he had homesteaded in the area called Mule Crossing.

The son of James Shields, Captain Meedy W. Shields, who later became a State Senator, inherited his father’s land holdings and developed it into a prosperous farm. During the latter 1840’s, a north-south railroad connecting the Ohio River at Jeffersonville with Indianapolis was built crossing the Shields’ farm. In 1852, an east-west railroad was being surveyed through Jackson County and Shields persuaded the railroad company to run through his property. In exchange for this favor, he agreed to name the town after the railroad’s civil engineer, J. Seymour. Seymour, Indiana, quickly became a major center of commercial activity. The city was incorporated in 1864 with a population of 1553.

You may not have been born in John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” but you will always be welcomed to visit — or live amongst our notable doctors, inventors, rock stars, and even a former Miss America, all who proudly claim Seymour, Indiana, as their home.

Welcome to Columbus!

Columbus, Indiana is ranked sixth in the nation for architectural innovation and design by the American Institute of Architects, right behind Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C. Visitors to Columbus can see more than 70 buildings and pieces of public art by internationally noted architects and artists, including I.M. Pei and Eliel Saarinen. The Columbus story has been featured in dozens of regional and national publications, including CBS’s Sunday Morning, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Midwest Living. Read more about our world renowned architecture, public art, and tour information at the Columbus Visitors Center.