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Cities: Lafayette Lafayette Lafayette (2000 population = 56,397) is the largest city in, and the seat of, Tippecanoe County. It was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution. The city lies along the banks of the Wabash River, and was platted in 1825 by William Digby, who traded along the river. Lafayette has a more commercial and industrial feel than the adjacent university-based city of West Lafayette. The railroad arrived in 1853, and the local economy has been engaged at various times since in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, aluminum, prefabricated homes, diesel engines, automobiles, and truck trailers, among other items. The first official air mail flight originated in Lafayette on 17 August 1859, when a hot-air balloon carried letters to Crawfordsville. The event was memorialized one hundred years later on a U.S. postage stamp.