Belleville, IN

Belleville is a Hendricks County CDP at the junction of U.S. 40 and State Road 39, between Plainfield and Stilesville. The place was laid out in 1829 and got an early boost when the National Road came through. Then the railroad missed Belleville by more than a mile in the 1850s, and the community lost the traffic that had helped it grow. That old transportation split is still the local scoop: Belleville is a road place, not a railroad town, with the National Road-era map showing through in the crossroads. It sits in Liberty Township, marked by its own name even as the Indianapolis-area roads spread around it.