Seymour: Where the Railroad Made John Mellencamp's Hometown

Seymour, Indiana was platted in eighteen fifty-two where two railroads intersected, making it one of southern Indiana's first true rail junction towns. It grew steadily as a manufacturing and freight hub. In eighteen sixty-six, the Reno Gang carried out what is often called the first peacetime train robbery in American history at Seymour, holding up an Ohio and Mississippi train and making off with well over ten thousand dollars.

The gang operated out of the surrounding Jackson County countryside until vigilantes and Pinkerton detectives broke them up. Seymour is also the birthplace of John Mellencamp, born here in nineteen fifty-one, who would go on to write small-town anthems like Jack and Diane and Pink Houses. The railroad still crosses here, and the downtown retains a working-class brick character that matches Mellencamp's music.