Welcome to the County Seat of Posey County

Mount Vernon is one of Indiana's early river towns, it is located in the most southern point of Indiana, and was established in 1816 on the bend of the Ohio River.  Mount Vernon's population today according to the census bureau is 7,318 as of 2003. Southwind Maritime Center, located in Mt. Vernon, is one of three Indiana Ports.  It  is located on 745 acres with eight tenants, 240 acres are available on the waterway.  Southwind Maritime Center allows access to all modes of transportation including state highway and rail, as well as the Ohio River. Southwind Maritime Center exported 3.36 million tons in 2004, which was a 45% increase from 2003. The picture below is of the pagoda at Sherburne Park located at the southern end of Main Street.

From Mcfadin's Bluff to County Seat

Mount Vernon's Early Years

By Jerry King

When Andrew and William Mcfadin came to the County in 1805, they probably had no intention of starting a town on the bluff.  Hence, in the founding of Mt. Vernon, there was no great movement (economic, political, or religious) responsible for the beginning of Mt. Vernon.  Rather, it was the collective efforts of individual men, sometimes working alone and sometimes together, that forged the beginning of the town.

By the fall of 1806 several families were already at work carving out new homesteads in the Posey County wilderness.  Mcfadin's Bluff, as the settlement came to be called, was a small isle of civilization in a sea of seemingly endless wilderness.  The settlement on the bluff burst forth from its cocoon in 1806 and slowly began to grow.

Life on the bluff on the beautiful Ohio in 1807 was quite different from what it is today, and yet in some respects, it was quite similar.  The basic resources of nature are still used today in many ways not unlike the ways our pioneer ancestors used them.  One resource that has not changed in importance down through the years has been the Ohio River.  In the very beginning, it was the river that put the community on the map.