The Origin of Sin City

From the history of Terre Haute we find that Vigo County was cut out of the existing Sullivan County. Thank you Daddy Sullivan County.

It also has an explanation of the name "Sin City" which started in the early twentieth century and unlike the fun times of the middle of the 1900s, the origins look somewhat like today. I'd bet they even had their Bible thumpers. Here it is pasted:

The burgeoning cities of America required extraordinary vigilance by citizens' groups to counteract vice and political corruption. In the 19th century Terre Haute was reputed to be a "sporting" town, the "Paris of Indiana." The public's indulgence of shady activities changed to anger in the early 1900s Civic and business organizations joined hands to expose sinister links between crime, special interests, and city hall. At one point the coalition petitioned for state aid and for federal monitoring of elections. Nationwide experiments in city management often granted elected mayors unprecedented appointive powers, therefore inviting misuse of authority. A Terre Haute mayor indebted to a political machine backed by brewery money could make sure his chief of police and his safety board neglected to enforce closing hours of saloons. Fraudulent election practices included repeat voting, stuffed ballot boxes, counterfeit ballots, padded registration lists, bribed elections officials and police, extortion, and violence. The tenacity of both the guardians of morality and the beneficiaries of lawbreaking is evident in the replays of official misconduct: Mayor Edwin Bidaman was impeached in 1906; Mayor Louis A. Gerhardt was arraigned for contempt of court in 1911; and Mayor Donn Roberts and 20 others convicted of election fraud in 1915 served time in Leavenworth Penitentiary. Despite these and other court victories, the press stamped Terre Haute as Sin City, thereby fostering an image that has haunted the community.