The Forgotten Ghost Town of Baltimore, Indiana

 

There isn’t much left of Baltimore, Indiana, but the settlement’s sole surviving building must have been grand in its day. The handsome red brick mansion near the intersection of Baltimore Hill Road and Indiana State Road 263, surrounded by cultivated farmland, dates back to the 1880s. Not to be confused with the larger Maryland city of the same name, the Indiana ghost town lies on the banks of the Wabash River in Warren County’s Mound Township. Founded in 1829 by William Willmeth and Samuel Hill, the settlement was once a bustling little community with a peak population of 70. Once home to a post office, a general store and a number of homes, Baltimore, Indiana fell into decline around the 1840s when construction of the Wabash and Erie Canal was completed on the far side of the river. As is so often the way of things, this waterway, which connected the Great Lakes to the Ohio River, would itself fall out of use over time. Not that it would come as any comfort to the spectres of Baltimore, of which now barely a trace remains, save for the red brick house mention above and a collection of tombstones in the ghost town’s old cemetery.