Town of the Week

Veedersburg, Indiana
January 16, 1999

Welcome to a land of husking bees, quilting bees, and spelling bees; and an occasional taffy pull or two. Tucked away on Indiana's western border is Veedersburg. This town of 1800 is named for Peter Veeder, who platted this site in 1872. Though he never lived there, he opened the first lumberyard and sold farm implements. That was important because the first settlers were displaced farmers from Ohio, Virginia and Maryland.

Today the Veedersburg area is one of nicely appointed, widely separated farms. And if you scratch the resurfacing of many a main street in Indiana and Illinois, you'll find "Veedersburg, Indiana" impressed on the bricks; symbolic of a long-gone industrial age.

Veedersburg bricks even made up the original track of the Indianapolis motor speedway, when it was built in 1910. Today, Veedersburg's larger manufacturers include Fountain Foundry, Masterguard Truck Bumpers, and Krupp Gerlach Crankshafts. Veedersburg has a well-known local product in Payton's Bar-B-Que, which is shipped throughout the region.

The town's children attend Fountain Central Consolidated school. For recreation, there's one of the state's most popular areas 2 miles away at Rogers lake. Near the banks of the Wabash, it's our town of the week, Veedersburg, Indiana.