Granville, the Canal Town That Vanished

Near here once stood the town of Granville, a place that boomed and disappeared inside a single lifetime. It was founded in eighteen thirty-four by Thomas Treckett and Thomas Concannon, platted along the Wabash and Erie Canal with one hundred fifty-three lots and a public square. For two decades it thrived as a canal shipping center, moving goods along the great waterway that linked the Wabash Valley to the wider world.

In eighteen fifty the town briefly renamed itself Weaton, honoring the Wea people who had lived just to the east before being removed west of the Mississippi. Then the railroads arrived in the mid eighteen fifties and pulled the trade away. The canal faded, and so did Granville.

By eighteen seventy-eight it had all but ceased to exist. Today only a cemetery and a bridge across the Wabash still carry its name.