Groverton, IN

Groverton is the Census-designated name for a small Starke County place locally known as Grovertown, in Oregon Township northeast of Knox. It sits along State Road 23 in northwestern Indiana’s low, rolling farm country, close to the roads leading through Starke County. The name shift is worth knowing: the older community is generally written Grovertown, while the newer Census boundary uses Groverton.

The settlement was laid out in 1858, and its post office dates to 1859. The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad came through in the 1850s, giving the place the usual railroad-era reason to exist and tying it to freight, mail, and farm trade. Today the local map is modest—State Road 23, the post office, homes, churches, small businesses, and the surrounding Oregon Township countryside—but Starke County still treats Groverton as a community worth planning for, including a park area in its recreation plan. It is a small crossroads whose two names tell the story of old local usage and new statistical geography.