Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Patriot, IN

Patriot is a small incorporated town in Posey Township, Switzerland County, Indiana, on the Ohio River — and it is the easternmost settlement in the entire state.

Patriot was originally called Troy and was platted in 1812, when Elisha Wade moved his family across the river from Kentucky and settled on the town site.

Wade built a series of mills at Patriot in 1812 — the town's first documented businesses — and the young river port shipped local produce downriver to New Orleans on flatboats.

The Patriot post office has been in operation since 1827.

In its steamboat-era heyday, Patriot's wharf boat was the hub of river commerce, and boats of the Louisville-Cincinnati line called at the town daily.

A fire in 1924 destroyed a large portion of Patriot's downtown, and few of the businesses ever rebuilt.

The Great Ohio River Flood of 1937 devastated Patriot: 273 of its 287 citizens were affected by the water, and 94 dwellings and 21 business houses were inundated.

Completion of the Markland Dam in 1963 raised the river level at Patriot by roughly another 30 feet, putting the Ohio River right at the town's front door.

Patriot counted 201 residents in the 2020 census, and the 2010 census recorded 209 people living in 76 households in the town.

Patriot was the hometown of Elwood Mead, who headed the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from 1924 to 1936, and of philanthropist Lydia Moss Bradley, the founder of Bradley University.