Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Berne, IN

Berne was settled in 1852 by Mennonite immigrants who came directly from Munsterberg, in the Jura Mountains near Moutier, Switzerland, and named the community after Bern, the Swiss capital.

Berne grew up around a depot on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad — the first train arrived on Christmas Day 1871 — and after its population passed 2,500, residents voted to incorporate it as a city in 1887.

Berne had 4,173 residents at the 2020 census, making it the second-largest city in Adams County.

Berne's 4,173 residents lived in 1,682 households at the 2020 census, and about half of those households were married couples.

Berne is known as the "Furniture Capital of Indiana": furniture making dates to Gehrig Furniture in 1877, and makers such as Smith Brothers of Berne (founded 1926) and Yager Furniture (founded 1910) still operate today.

The countryside around Berne holds the fifth-largest Amish community in the United States, and uniquely, its Amish speak Bernese German — a Swiss German dialect — rather than the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken by most American Amish.

Berne's First Mennonite Church is the largest church of its kind in North America, and the General Conference of the Mennonite Church has met in Berne four times, in 1884, 1902, 1926 and 1947.

Downtown Berne is dominated by the Muensterberg Plaza and Clock Tower, a 160-foot tower modeled on the medieval Zytglogge clock tower in Bern, Switzerland, dedicated in July 2010 after a community effort costing about $3.5 million.

Four times a day in the warmer months, the clock tower's glockenspiel sends out twelve animated figures, each five and a half feet tall, to act out the story of Berne's founding, and the plaza also holds the only Swiss Canton Tree in the United States.

The Swiss Heritage Village and Museum on the edge of Berne is northern Indiana's largest outdoor museum, with 15 historic buildings from 1860 to 1900 on 26 acres, including an 1856 cider press reputed to be the world's largest.