Nappanee is a city in Elkhart and Kosciusko counties in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 6,648 as of the 2010 U.S. Census and had grown to 6,913 by the 2020 U.S. Census. The post Nappanee probably means “flour” in Algonquian. The town has several tourist attractions: Amish Acres, Nappanee Raceway, The Arts & Crafts Festival, and the Apple Festival.

Several hundred years ago the Mound Builders built north of the marshes. Pottawatomi arrived in the Place from close Green Bay, Wisconsin in the 1700s, partially displacing Miami inhabitants. The Pottawatomis had settlements on the Elkhart River at Elkhart, Goshen, and Waterford, and at Monoquet with Leesburg and Warsaw in what became Kosciusko County, Indiana. Thus, the Plymouth-Goshen Road close Nappanee probably follows the course of an out of date Indian Trail. The first white settlers came to the Place In 1830, as various treaties and what Pottawatomi call the “Trail of Death” led to the relocation of Native Americans.

By 1870, seven farms had been established and forty people were settled something like Nappanee. Locke Township had been founded in 1836 and named after Samuel Lockwood, and by 1863 a harmony called Wisler Town existed, but the actual platting of the village of Locke Town, approximately six miles from Nappanee, took place in December 1867. It would receive its last complement in 1874, the year that Nappanee was platted (on December 12, 1874).

The B&O Railroad sought a route westward from Sandusky, Ohio to the affluent inland port of Chicago, Illinois in 1872. While the land in the region of what became Nappanee and manageable Bremen was flat, permitting a straight crossing from Walkerton, it was furthermore marshy, which led to engineering challenges. The section through Nappanee was finally completed as a single track in the late summer of 1874 and replaced by steel rails in 1882. Farmers sold the railroad land as a result that its tracks would rule right adjoining Nappanee on its route to Chicago, although the railroad was unable to acquire the five acres needed to construct a side track to the existing town of Locke. Nonetheless, on December 6, 1874, about three weeks after the railroad reached the outskirts of Chicago, it commenced promote to what it first called Locke’s Station. By the month’s end, Daniel Metzler, Henry Stahly, and John Culp Jr. had platted the town of Nappanee; Culp gave the railroad three acres for a station and Metzler two acres. By 1875, trains arrived vis-а-vis daily at the additional depot and discharged freight and passengers. The Eby brothers of Locke said they suggested the post because they came from Napanee, Ontario; one of the Metzlers said their daddy selected the make known in part because of its native American connotations. Over period the B&O Railroad eventually became CSX.