Waterloo, Indiana: Railroad Stop Named for a Battle

Waterloo, Indiana was laid out in eighteen fifty-six when the railroad was extended to that point. The town took its name from the Belgian battlefield where Napoleon was defeated in eighteen fifteen, a place name that was fashionable across the American Midwest in the mid-eighteen hundreds. The town grew into a modest farm service center straddling Grant and Smithfield townships.

Perhaps the most unexpected piece of its history came in eighteen eighty-eight, when a mastodon skeleton was discovered near the town. That skeleton eventually made its way to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where it remains on display today.