Lawrenceburg: Whiskey City USA

Samuel Vance founded Lawrenceburg in eighteen oh two on the Indiana bank of the Ohio River and named it after his wife's family. He could not have known he was planting the seed of what would become, within a generation, a major whiskey-distilling center.

The Ohio River and the limestone-filtered aquifer beneath town gave distillers everything they needed. Barrels of whiskey could float down the Ohio and the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans. A distillery operated here by the middle of the nineteenth century.

At its peak, Lawrenceburg was saturated with distilleries. The whiskey flowed out by steamboat and railroad until Prohibition largely shuttered the industry. The giant MGP Ingredients plant operating today is a direct descendant of that heritage, quietly supplying rye whiskey to hundreds of brands across the country.