Patoka, IN

Patoka is a town in Gibson County, Indiana, laid out and platted in 1813 near the Patoka River. The 2020 census counted 706 people, making it one of the county's larger small communities. A post office opened in 1833, and the town's name comes from a term associated with logs lying in the river's muddy bottom. The river remains the useful geographic reference even where the modern town's streets do the everyday work.

ATTRThis file was contributed to Wikimedia Commons by Indiana State Library and Historical Bureau as part of a cooperation project. The donation was facilitated by the Digital Public Library of America , via its partner Indiana Memory . Record in source catalog DPLA identifier: e353d82f9c0596b37d5f05df3d7b5239 Indiana State Library and Historical Bureau identifier: http://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16066coll11/id/36274 / Public domain

Education shows how Patoka fits into the wider county map. Students are now in the North Gibson School Corporation, while the former Patoka High School merged into White River High School in 1963 as Indiana's small districts consolidated. The change left a local school memory that still appears in the town's history, alongside the older post office and river name. The local scoop is an early-platted Gibson County town whose identity runs through the Patoka River, a nineteenth-century postal stop, and the school connections reaching beyond the town limits.