Christmas City U.S.A. is a local non-profit organization promoting the Christmas season in Marion and Grant County. They proudly organize and sponsor the Annual Christmas Parade each year the Saturday before Thanksgiving to kick off the Holiday season.
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With more than 15,000 total students, Indiana Wesleyan University is the fastest-growing university in Indiana and currently the largest private university in the state. The university’s main campus in Marion is home to more than 3,200 undergraduates and nearly 1,000 postgraduates. IWU has one of the largest adult education programs in the Midwest, and dozens of adult learning campuses are located throughout Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Read MoreMarion’s prosperity plateaued between the end of the gas boom, just prior to World War I, when the gas boom ended, and 1955, when General Motors located a stamping and tool plant there. A new era launched overnight, raising the sights of local residents who migrated to the city in unprecedented numbers with thoughts of a vastly expanded community potential. Except for bedroom communities near metropolitan centers, Marion’s growth during the 1950s exceeded all but one Indiana city with populations of 10,000-100,000.
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A lynching occurred in Marion on August 7, 1930. A large mob estimated at 2,000 gathered at the county jail where three young black men were held on charges of killing a white man and raping his girlfriend. Before they could be tried, the three, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and James Cameron, were dragged from the jail and severely beaten. Shipp and Smith were hanged, but Cameron was released when an unidentified man claimed that he had nothing to do with the crimes. In 1931 he was convicted as an accessory to murder and served four years before being paroled. James Cameron went on to serve as the Indiana State Director of Civil Liberties from 1942–1950 and founded three local chapters of the NAACP.
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On July 23, 1888, with increasing membership amongst the six National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Congress established the seventh of ten National Homes in Grant County, Indiana to be known as the Marion Branch . Congress allotted an appropriation of $200,000, while Grant County residents provided a natural gas supply for the heating and lighting of this new facility. Marion was selected as a site for the new branch due to the availability of natural gas and the political activities of Colonel George W. Steele, Sr, the 11th Congressional Representative from 1880 to 1890.
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Marion grew slowly for more than 50 years as an agricultural trading center supported by a sprinkling of small farm- and forest-related industries. Indians were a common sight as they wandered in from Indiana’s last reservation, with its Indian school, Baptist church and cemetery, 8 miles (13 km) away.
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