Frankfort, Indiana

F rankfort, Indiana, the county seat of Clin- ton County, located in the center of the state, was originally laid out on a 60-acre tract donated by brothers John, William, and Nicholas Pence from Warren County, Ohio, in 1830. At their request the town was named Frankfort in honor of their great-grandparents’ home of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. At the turn of the 20th century, Frankfort became known as the “Gem City,” because of the bright- ness of its new electric lights which could be seen from miles away across the prairie. More recently, Frankfort is known as the home of the yearly Frankfort Hot Dog Festival, which, during the last weekend of July, attracts thousands of people from all across the Midwest. Today, Frankfort is a city of 16,400 with a very diverse economic sector based on manufactur- ing and food processing. “With the agricultural sector being so strong around our community, we believe that we are the city that feeds the state that feeds the world,” remarks Chris Mc- Barnes, who became the youngest mayor in the history of the city, when he was elected to his first term in 2011. “We do have the largest con- tiguous industrial park in the state, and we have the second largest Frito-Lay, globally, which is our largest employer. They employ 1,400 individ- uals, and across our industrial park, as a whole, we are near 4,500 employees.” Other major businesses in Frankfort include food giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Conagra Brands, which has its world-largest distribution center there. “At 1.6 million square feet, they had to take the curvature of the earth into account when they built the facility,” McBarnes notes.