Monticello was founded by the White County commissioners in 1834 on a bluff above the Tippecanoe River. They named it after the mansion of
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. It was incorporated as a town in 1862. The county seat grew more rapidly when the railroads came
to town before the Civil War. Then the town grew large enough to become a city in 1909, and a mayor was elected. The area around the city became a
tourist destination in the 1920s after dams created the twin lakes--Shafer and Freeman--and Ideal Beach was conceived. It was renamed Indiana...