Baltimore, Indiana: The Wabash River Town the Canal Left Behind

01Founding a River Town in Warren County

William Willmeth and Samuel Hill platted Baltimore in November 1829, in what is now Mound Township. The Wabash was the main road of the region then, and Baltimore was one of the towns founded near the river's banks that flourished because of it. It was an old grain shipping town, and the logic of the site is plain. Farmers could bring grain to the bank and send it downstream, and merchants could supply the farmers.

Hill appears to have understood that. In 1830 he had $2,500 worth of merchandise in his store, the largest stock in the county at the time. It suggests Baltimore began with real ambition. Another store was opened by Samuel Wetzel in 1839. The town eventually had two stores and a distillery. A post office opened in 1833.

At its height, the population was about 70. No census figures turned up in the research, so that number is an estimate repeated by the sources rather than a counted total.

02What Happened to Baltimore?

The cause usually given is the Wabash and Erie Canal. When the canal was completed on the opposite side of the river in the 1840s, the community dwindled. The canal favored towns on the Fountain County side, and towns like Baltimore dwindled.

The accounts disagree on where the canal ran. One says it was on the opposite side of the river. Another places it about two miles from the river, "diverting traffic." What they share is the cause. Trade that had depended on the river moved to the canal, and Baltimore sat on the wrong side of it. The Wabash had brought the town its traffic, and the canal took the traffic away.

The timeline is looser than the tidy "dead by the 1840s" version found in one source. The post office, which opened in 1833, is recorded as running until 1865. The most defensible reading is that Baltimore dwindled through the 1840s and kept a thin official existence for roughly two more decades. No contemporary newspaper accounts or named residents beyond the founders and Wetzel turned up. The town's final years are documented only through that post office record.

03Finding the Abandoned Baltimore Site

Baltimore lies at 40°09′57″N 87°26′31″W, along State Road 263 near County Road 1025 South, about 3.2 air miles northwest of Covington. The town site lay south of the cemetery, between two highways, in the southwest quarter of Section 21.

Only the cemetery carries the name today. That is common for abandoned Baltimore sites, where the name survives on a burial ground long after the streets and storefronts are gone. Baltimore is an extinct community in Mound Township, which was a town that thrived on the banks of the Wabash River in the early 19th century.

04What Remains of Baltimore Today

Very little remains. The Baltimore Cemetery sits on West Baltimore Hill Road next to Rodgers Cemetery, at about 40°9′58.59″N 87°26′45.92″W. The town stood near here in the 1800s. The cemetery lies on the north side of the road, a short distance east of the state highway.

The only standing structure tied to the site is a large two-story brick house from the 1880s. It is reportedly about 150 yards southeast of Baltimore Hill Road, near the highway junction. It was built decades after the town's decline, so it belongs to the later farmland that replaced Baltimore, not to the grain port Willmeth and Hill platted. It is the last building at the site.

Anyone looking for the Baltimore ghost town should expect a quiet country road, a pair of old cemeteries, and a view toward the Wabash. The surrounding land appears to be in use, and the research found no information on public access, so visitors should treat the area with care and respect private property. The cemeteries are the most reliable place to stand and think about a town that was settled in 1829 and gone within a generation or two.