The Settling of Upland

The Settling of Upland. . , The area around Upland was one of the last strongholds of the Miami Indians until the Battle of Mississinewa in 1812, fought in Grant County east of the present site of Jalapa. With the Miamis defeated, central Indiana was opened to settlement., The first settler in the Upland area was John Oswalt, who settled on 2,240 acres in the 1830s on the hill now occupied by Taylor University. He named the area Rising Sun, due to a break in the dense forest that then covered Jefferson Township. Oswalt believed that a canal linking Fort Wayne and Indianapolis would be built through his property. When this scheme wasn't realized, he sold almost all of his land., One of the buyers was Jacob Bugher. In 1851, Bugher became the first settler of the town of Upland, later laying out the town along the railroad in September of 1867. He became a schoolteacher and postmaster in the town he founded. By 1877, the new town had approximately 30 families, three dry goods stores, a sawmill, two warehouses, a barrel stave factory, a blacksmith, and a post office. There was also one grade school and one church, both shown here on the first plat of Upland., This steady growth continued for Upland's first 20 years, with the setback of a large fire in 1885. Several buildings were lost in the flames, including two stores, a stable, and a house. Upland rebuilt, and in 1887, natural gas was discovered in the area, changing the town's history forever.