Indiana · St. Joseph River Valley
Elkhart County
Where the Elkhart River meets the St. Joseph: RV makers, Amish farms and river towns.
Project Scroll is an independent local-history website. This is not an official page of Elkhart County or of any township, city or village in it. For official business, contact the county or local offices directly.
Welcome
Elkhart County, Indiana
Elkhart County was established in 1830, with its seat first at Dunlap and then at Goshen. Its main river is the St. Joseph, joined at the city of Elkhart by the Elkhart River, whose name is the county’s.
About 207,000 people live here today (207,047 at the 2020 census), in Elkhart, Goshen and Nappanee, small towns, sixteen townships and a large Amish and Mennonite community. Pick a place to begin.
Cities and towns
ElkhartCity · The elk’s-heart island where two rivers meet, and the band-instrument city.
GoshenCity · A county seat chosen on a prairie and powered by its own canal.
NappaneeCity · A railroad town raised out of a huckleberry swamp in 1874.
BristolTown · A mill town at the mouth of the Little Elkhart, in fruit country.
MiddleburyTown · A Vermont-named village on the old White Pigeon road.- MillersburgTown · Solomon Miller’s railroad town of 1855.
WakarusaTown · Once Salem, renamed in 1859 for a creek in Kansas.
Townships
- Baugo TownshipTownship · Named for the ‘devil river’ that ran too fast for a canoe.
- Benton TownshipTownship · Where Matthew Boyd ran a canoe ferry on the Fort Wayne road.
- Cleveland TownshipTownship · Named in 1835 for the Forest City in Ohio.
- Clinton TownshipTownship · Rolling farm country of the Amish and the Dunkards.
Concord TownshipTownship · One of the county’s first two townships, and the home of its largest city.
Elkhart TownshipTownship · Elkhart Prairie, the county seat and the mills of Waterford.- Harrison TownshipTownship · Ten Whig votes and a township named for ‘Tippecanoe.’
Jackson TownshipTownship · Col. John Jackson’s prairie, the Barrens and Buzzard’s Hill.- Jefferson TownshipTownship · Fruit hills and Dock Lake between the county’s two cities.
- Locke TownshipTownship · Samuel Lockwood’s half-township in the deep woods.
- Middlebury TownshipTownship · Vermont hills on the Little Elkhart.
- Olive TownshipTownship · Six voters and a blue sugar bowl for a ballot box.
- Osolo TownshipTownship · Oak barrens, small lakes and Christiana Creek.
- Union TownshipTownship · Churches at every crossroads, and the east half of Nappanee.
- Washington TownshipTownship · Hills of vineyards and orchards on the St. Joseph.
- York TownshipTownship · New Yorkers on the Vistula road, and Bonneyville Mill.