Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

From the record

“Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District is a national historic district located at Mount Vernon, Indiana. The district encompasses 39 contributing buildings, two contributing sites, one contributing structure, and two contributing objects in the central business district of Mount Vernon.”
Wikipedia article Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Posey County · listed in 2003 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Roughly bounded by Ohio R., 6th & Walnut Sts. & College Av., Mount Vernon, 47620
When was it listed? June 2003
Category. district
Township. Black township
National Register reference number. 03000545 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

35,592 words

The chapter on Black Township in History of Posey County, Indiana : from the Earliest Times to the Present, with Biographical Sketches, Reminiscences, Notes, Etc. : Together with an Extended History of the Northwest, the Indiana Territory, and the State of Indiana, published 1886 names Mount Vernon. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

This township was not reduced to its present limits with its present name until March 13, 1822. It was named in honor of the Black family who came fi-om North Carolina in 1806 and settled a short distance northwest of Mount Vernon.

Passage source: History of Posey County, Indiana : from the Earliest Times to the Present, with Biographical Sketches, Reminiscences, Notes, Etc. : Together with an Extended History of the Northwest, the Indiana Territory, and the State of Indiana, published 1886.

William Henry Harrison entered a portion of the land on which the city of Mount Vernon now stands. His claim called for 317 acres of Section 8. This claim he tried to sell to James Black, but he refused to buy because one of the McFaddin's had squatted on the land and refused to yield possession. Harrison afterward sold the land to Aaron "Williams, of Big Prairie, 111., for a horse and some money borrowed of James Black.

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 Black Township - 35,592 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

1 since 2010

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District in 2010, burning about 6 acres in total. None started naturally. None 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	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
24 October 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	EGYPT FIRE

Every fire recorded in Posey County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Stone. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Posey Co. Hwy. Dept.	Stone	Producer

Every working recorded in Posey County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

4 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Posey County Courthouse Square	0.1 miles	1989
Welborn Historic District	0.2 miles	1992
William Gonnerman House	0.3 miles	1985
Frederick and Augusta Hagemann Farm	0.9 miles	1993

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 03000545 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Posey County	All 14 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.