Batesville, Indiana

Batesville in Franklin County, Indiana was platted in eighteen fifty-two and grew into a modest manufacturing center on the edge of the Ohio hills. What made it quietly famous is an industry most people never think about: caskets. The Batesville Casket Company was founded in eighteen eighty-four, and over the following century it became one of the leading casket manufacturers in the United States, shipping to funeral homes across the country from its plant on the south side of town. The company, part of Hillenbrand Industries, still operates here, and Batesville's roughly seven thousand residents live with the peculiar distinction of residing in the casket capital of America, a fact the local chamber of commerce tends to mention with dry good humor.