Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Fort Wayne

FORT WAYNE, or, as it is sometimes called, “Summit City,” a city of the United States, at the head of Allen county, Indiana, situated 751 miles W. of New York and 102 N.E. of Indianopolis, at the junction of the St Joseph and the St Mary, which form what is known as the Maumee River. The Wabash and Erie canal passes through the town, and no fewer than eight railway lines branch out from it in various directions. Besides the extensive works maintained by several of the railway companies for the building of carriages, &c., there are a number of engineering establishments, planing mills, flour mills, and tanneries, sash and door works, and a woollen factory. The churches are twenty-seven in all; the educational institutions comprise a high school, a normal school, a Methodist college (founded in 1846), the Concordia Lutheran college (founded in 1850), and two public libraries; and among the other public buildings may be mentioned the court-house, the county jail, the city hospital, and the orphans home. Interior communication is facilitated by six miles of tramway lines. In the early part of the 18th century the French established a trading port on the site of the present city, which took its name, however, from a British fort erected in 1794 by General Wayne. The town was laid out in 1825, but did not become of much importance till the opening of the Wabash and Erie canal in 1840. In that year it attained the rank of a city, though its inhabitants numbered only 2080. By 1850 they had increased to 4282, by 1860 to 10,388, and by 1870 to 17,718.