Campbellsburg, IN

Campbellsburg is a Washington County town in Brown Township, Indiana, where the 2020 census counted 529 residents. John Pollard hired a surveyor in 1849 to lay out lots along the railroad route, and the first name was Buena Vista, honoring four local men killed at the Battle of Buena Vista. A railroad depot followed in 1851, and the post office opened by 1854.

Robert Campbell bought the first lot in 1850 and added nine more lots southeast of Buena Vista. He renamed the town Campbellsburg after finding that another Indiana post office already used Buena Vista. At the turn of the twentieth century, stores, a sawmill, flour mill, doctors, dentist, and stockyard filled out the town’s business map. A Batt Canning Factory operated from 1914 through 1935, and West Washington School Corporation serves the area today. The old railroad-era pattern still gives the town a recognizable center, even as regional school and road connections carry daily errands beyond the original lots. Campbellsburg still carries its railroad beginning in its name, its street plan, and its old town center.