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Clarksville, Indiana
Summary
Clarksville is a town in Clark County, Indiana, United States, along the Ohio River and is a part of the Louisville Metropolitan area. The population was 22,333 at the 2020 census. The town was founded in 1783 by early resident George Rogers Clark at the only seasonal rapids on the entire Ohio River, it is the oldest American town in the former Northwest Territory. The town is home to the Colgate clock, one of the largest clocks in the world and the Falls of the Ohio State Park, home to the world's largest exposed Devonian period fossil bed.
The site that would become Clarksville was first used as a base of operations by George Rogers Clark during the American Revolutionary War. In 1778 he established a post on an island at the head of the Falls of the Ohio, from which he trained his 175-man regiment. After the war, Clark was granted a tract of for his services in the war. In 1783, were set aside for the development of a town, Clarksville. The same year a stockade was built and settlement began.
The explorer William Clark was a younger brother of George Rogers Clark. Historian Stephen Ambrose writes of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in Undaunted Courage, "When they shook hands [at Clarksville], the Lewis and Clark Expedition began." A two-figure statue near the falls commemorates the expedition. Several localities other than Clarksville claim precedence for the start of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, most notably St. Louis, Missouri.
Due to the many floods in the nineteenth century and the Indiana Canal Company's failed competition to build a canal around the Ohio Falls, the town struggled. On August 24, 1805 the Indiana Territorial Legislature authorized the construction of a canal around the Falls of the Ohio at Clarksville. The first attempt failed and the investors lost their money. Historians believe it was used to finance the conspiracy of Aaron Burr. Developers tried to build a canal in 1817 and again in 1820. But the race to build the canal was lost in 1826 when the federal government made a large grant to build the Louisville and Portland Canal.
Official source
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