Upland, Indiana: The Gas Boom Saved the College

Upland was platted in the late eighteen sixties by Jacob Bugher as a depot stop on the Indiana Central Railroad, named because it was believed to sit at the highest elevation on the line between Columbus and Chicago. By eighteen eighty, the town had fewer than two hundred people. What changed everything was the Indiana natural gas boom of the eighteen eighties.

In eighteen ninety-three, Taylor University in Fort Wayne was struggling financially and looking for a new home. Upland offered ten thousand dollars in cash and ten acres of land, raised from gas-boom money. The university moved that summer.

Taylor University, founded in eighteen forty-six and named for Methodist bishop William Taylor, has been rooted here ever since.