Geneva

Geneva: home of Gene Stratton Porter

Geneva, town, Adams county, eastern Indiana, U.S., on the Wabash River, 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Muncie. It was created in 1874 through the incorporation of the towns of Buffalo and Alexander and the Geneva train station (on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad) and presumably was named for the Swiss city. A rural community with many Old Order Amish and Swiss Mennonite families, it lies in the “Limberlost Country,” a timber swampland made famous by the naturalist and novelist Gene Stratton Porter in novels such as Freckles (1904) and A Girl of the Limberlost (1909). The swampland was drained by the early 1900s, and its biodiversity was lost, but efforts to restore part of the wetland habitat began in 1996. Porter’s home near the former swamp is now Limberlost State Historic Site. Pop. (2000) 1,368; (2010) 1,293.