Waterloo, IN

Waterloo is a DeKalb County town laid out in 1856 when the railroad reached the site. That rail connection still shows up in the restored 1883 depot and the town's Amtrak stop, while the Waterloo-Grant Township Public Library carries another old local institution: it opened in 1913 with Carnegie support. There is a wonderfully odd footnote in the area's history too—a nearly complete mastodon skeleton found near Waterloo in 1888 is now displayed at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Waterloo is northeast Indiana in a tidy mix of rail, library, and prehistoric bone.