Corydon Historic District

Corydon was platted in eighteen oh eight by surveyor Harvey Heth, and by tradition was named, at the request of William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, after a shepherd in a pastoral hymn. When Indiana approached statehood in June eighteen sixteen, forty-three delegates from thirteen counties met here to draft a constitution, spending much of their deliberation under a giant elm tree in the summer heat. They finished in nineteen days, prohibiting slavery and mandating free public education.

When Indiana entered the Union on December eleventh, eighteen sixteen, Corydon became the first state capital, with the Harrison County Courthouse serving as the statehouse. The capital moved to Indianapolis in eighteen twenty-five, but the old limestone courthouse still stands in the town square, one of the oldest surviving government buildings in the Midwest and a quiet monument to the weeks when a small Ohio River town launched a state.