Settled by pioneer immigrants some 200 years ago, the city of Evansville is situated on a gentle horseshoe bend on the Ohio River. The first cabin built in Evansville was built in 1809, home of George Miller(Kentucky)George Miller. As testament to the Ohio's grandeur, the early French explorers named it La Belle Riviere ("The Beautiful River"). Before the pioneers, Evansville was home first to an ancient community of Native Americans called the Mississippians. Evansville was laid out in 1817, and was named in honor of Robert Morgan Evans (1783-1844), one of its founders, who was an officer under then General William Henry Harrison in the War of 1812. . It soon became a thriving commercial town, with an extensive river trade, was incorporated in 1819, and received a city charter in 1847. The completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes to the Ohio River, greatly accelerated the city's growth. Evansville's first railroad company, Evansville & Crawfordsville Railroad, was built in 1850. By the United States Census, 1890U.S. census of 1890 Evansville ranked as the 56th largest urban area in the United States, a rank it gradually fell from in the early 1900s. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evansville%2C_Indiana