Lafayette (/ˌlɑːfiˈɛt, ˌlæf-/ LA(H)F-ee-ET) is a city in and is the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States,[4][5] located 63 miles (101 km) northwest of Indianapolis and 125 miles (201 km) southeast of Chicago.

[6] West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, which contributes significantly to both communities.

Lafayette was founded in 1825 on the southeast bank of the Wabash River near where the river becomes impassable for riverboats upstream, though a French fort and trading post had existed since 1717 on the opposite bank and three miles downstream.

It was named for the French general Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero.

When European explorers arrived at this area, it was inhabited by a tribe of Miami Native Americans known as the Ouiatenon or Weas.

In 1717, the French government established Fort Ouiatenon across the Wabash River and three miles (4.8 km) south of present-day Lafayette.

An annual reenactment and festival known as Feast of the Hunters' Moon is held there each autumn.

In 1838, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, the first United States Patent Commissioner, published a booklet titled Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana, with Hints on Its Agricultural Advantages, to promote settlement of the region.

By 1845, Ellsworth had purchased 93,000 acres (380 km2) of farmland around Lafayette and moved there from Connecticut to supervise land sales.

[10] He became president of the Tippecanoe County Agricultural Society in April 1851 – despite some local resentment over what was called "the Yale Crowd" – but he was defeated the same year when he ran for the Indiana House of Representatives.

[12] The Wabash and Erie Canal in the 1840s stimulated trade and affirmed Lafayette's regional prominence.

In 1959, the US Postal Service issued a 7¢ airmail stamp commemorating the centennial of the event.

[16] Lafayette is the larger principal city of the Lafayette-Frankfort CSA, a Combined Statistical Area that includes the Lafayette metropolitan area (Benton, Carroll, and Tippecanoe counties) and the Frankfort micropolitan area (Clinton County),[21][22][23] which had a combined population of 212,408 at the 2000 United States Census.

Companies located in Lafayette include: The Lafayette area has four branch locations of the Tippecanoe County Public Library:[27] The government consists of a mayor – elected in a citywide vote – and a city council of nine members.

WRTV, WTHR, WTTV, and WXIN, the respective ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates in Indianapolis which had been carried by cable and satellite providers in the Lafayette market as "out-of-market" stations, remain viewable in the area via a large over-the-air antenna or, in some cases, via a subscription satellite or streaming service.

Many lines that originally passed through the downtown were redirected in the mid-1990s to a rail corridor near the Wabash River.