Wheeler, Indiana
19 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1934 and the latest in 1992. It stands in Union Township. It lies in ZIP code area 46393. It stands on Roper Ditch. The Survey maps it on the Portage quadrangle. 435 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 666 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresWheeler fell from 443 to 435 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 443 | |
| 2020 | 435 | -8 (-2%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
9 surveys from 19 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1934 USGS Porter quadrangle1:48000
- 1940 USGS Porter quadrangle1:62500, 3 printings
- 1953 USGS Chicago quadrangle1:250000, 5 printings
- 1953 USGS Garyton quadrangle1:24000
- 1957 USGS Chicago quadrangle1:250000
- 1960 USGS Portage quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
- 1968 USGS Portage quadrangle1:24000, 4 printings
- 1980 USGS Chicago quadrangle1:100000
- 1992 USGS Portage quadrangle1:24000
In the county-history sources
9,439 words on this townshipThe county-history sources names this settlement in its chapter on Union Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.
Read the whole chapter on Union Township - it names this place 2 more 2 times.
Fires near this place
12 since 1995Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 12 fires within 5 miles of Wheeler between 1995 and 2005, burning about 61 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 5 |
| Debris and open burning | 3 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 2 |
| Arson/incendiarism | 1 |
| Railroad operations and maintenance | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 April 2005 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.5 acres | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 11 April 2003 | Debris and open burning | 3.0 acres | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 31 March 2003 | Recreation and ceremony | under an acre | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 31 March 2002 | Debris and open burning | 2.0 acres | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 29 March 2004 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 26 March 2003 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 25 March 1995 | Railroad operations and maintenance | 22 acres | Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore | UNION |
| 13 March 2004 | Arson/incendiarism | under an acre | Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
6 since 2001Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Wheeler in 6 storm reports between 2001 and 2025: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Wheeler | - | Photos showed several shingles and other small roofing material peeled off of a house. |
| May 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Wheeler | - | A private weather station measured a wind gust to 61 mph. |
| June 2020 | Thunderstorm Wind | Wheeler | - | Tree damage was reported along Route 130 near Wheeler. |
| August 2001 | Tornado (F0) | Wheeler | - | A small weak tornado touched down briefly on the north side of Wheeler. A few tree limbs were blown down and corn was flattened. |
| July 2003 | Hail | Wheeler | - | no account filed |
| July 2002 | Thunderstorm Wind | Wheeler | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sedley | 2.0 miles | 13 | |
| Camelot Manor Estates | 3.0 miles | 19 | |
| South Haven | 3.1 miles | 19 | |
| Shorewood Forest | 3.8 miles | 13 | |
| Garyton | 4.3 miles | 19 | |
| Portage | 4.4 miles | 19 | |
| Pleasant Valley | 4.5 miles | 19 | |
| Lincoln Hills | 4.8 miles | 14 |
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Wheeler | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q9095869 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 445882. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.








