Crawfordsville is a city in Union Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 15,915. The city is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is home to Wabash College, ranked #12 in the United States for undergraduate studies in 2008. In 1813, Williamson Dunn, Henry Ristine, and Major Ambrose Whitlock noted that the site of present-day Crawfordsville was ideal for settlement, surrounded by deciduous forest and potentially arable land, with water provided by a nearby creek, later named Sugar Creek. They returned a decade later to find... at least one cabin built. In 1821, William and Jennie Offield had built a cabin on a little creek, later to be known as Offield Creek, four miles southwest of the future site of Crawfordsville. Major Whitlock laid out the town in March 1823. Crawfordsville was named in honor of Colonel William H. Crawford, who was the cabinet officer who had issued Whitlock's commission as Receiver of Public Lands. According to a diary of Sanford C. Cox, one of the first schoolmasters in the area, in 1824: "Crawfordsville is the only town between Terre Haute and Fort Wayne Maj.
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