Auburn, Indiana

“I’ve often said I’m a mayor of a city that celebrates our past, lives in the present, and prepares for the future.”The mayor in question, quoted above, is Nor- man Yoder; the city he has led since 2000 is Auburn, Indiana, the county seat of DeKalb County, in the northeast corner of the state.Auburn,which lies about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne,was founded byWesley Park in 1836 at the intersection of two major routes going west, Goshen-Defiance Road and Coldwater Road. Legend has it that the name of the community came from“The Deserted Village” a poem by Oliver Goldsmith that begins: “Sweet Au- burn, loveliest village of the plain,Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain.” Today, this city of 13,000 is both a bedroom commu- nity of Fort Wayne, as well as a vibrant manufactur- ing town whose history is rooted in the automobile