Harmony, IN

Harmony is a town in Van Buren Township, Clay County, where the National Road and the old Vandalia Railroad corridor put a small community between Brazil and Terre Haute. An earlier settlement was laid out by John Graves in 1839, but the land sale that followed insolvency wiped that plat from the map. Isaac Marks recorded a new town site in 1864, giving the present town its start. Harmony later became the eastern terminus of a Rapid Transit Electric Railroad line built in 1893-94, a detail that gives the town a layered transportation history.

ATTRDougtone / CC BY-SA 2.0

South Harmony Road leads to the Coal Company Store, a brick building tied to Clay County's coal-era economy. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and removed from the register in 1992. Harmony Community Park adds a recreation address to that older map. The town's present outline still holds the same mix: National Road traffic, railroad expansion, a coal-country building, and a community park within a few streets.