Wabash, First Electrically Lighted City

Around this courthouse square, Wabash made history on the night of March thirty-first, eighteen eighty. The city council had struck a deal with the Cleveland inventor Charles Brush to test his new arc lighting, and four powerful lamps were hoisted to the flagstaff atop the courthouse dome. When the switch was thrown, a crowd of more than ten thousand people fell silent as electric light flooded the entire town. It was visible a mile away.

With that single test, Wabash claimed the title of first city in the world lit by electricity, though only the courthouse square was truly lit. It happened just months after Thomas Edison perfected his light bulb, when most of America still burned gas and kerosene. The little Indiana county seat had stepped into the modern age first.