Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Charlestown, IN

Charlestown, in Clark County, Indiana, was established in 1808 on 300 acres and named for one of its surveyors, Charles Beggs, with three acres set aside for a town square.

Charlestown served as the Clark County seat from 1811 until 1878, when the seat reverted to Jeffersonville, which had surpassed it economically.

In 1818, the first Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in Indiana met in Charlestown.

The Indiana Army Ammunition Plant transformed Charlestown almost overnight: its population was only about 900 in 1940 but swelled to roughly 13,400 as DuPont built a huge smokeless powder plant, where production began in April 1941 and more than 27,000 workers flooded into the area.

The 2020 census counted 7,775 people and 3,008 households in Charlestown, and the city has kept growing quickly since, with an estimated population of about 8,800 by 2025.

Just east of Charlestown, Charlestown State Park opened in 1996 on former ammunition plant land along the Ohio River and has grown to about 5,100 acres, making it one of Indiana's largest state parks.

Inside Charlestown State Park, hikers can walk Trail 7 through the ruins of Rose Island, a popular 1920s amusement park with a hotel, wooden roller coaster, and Ferris wheel that was destroyed by the great Ohio River flood of 1937 and never rebuilt.

Milling shaped early Charlestown: the area's first mill was built on Fourteen Mile Creek in 1804, and John Work's 1814 tunnel mill is preserved today within the Tunnel Mill Scout Reservation.

Charlestown's public schools, including Charlestown High School, are part of the Greater Clark County Schools district.

Charlestown sits in far southern Indiana about 14 miles northeast of Louisville, Kentucky, across the Ohio River.