Fort Wayne is a city and the county seat of Allen County in northeastern Indiana, USA. Nearly equidistant from Detroit, Michigan, Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio, it has historically served as a transportation and communications center for the region, and an incubator for many products and companies, much more so than its size might suggest.

Originally a portage, later a canal and rail center, located on the first coast-to-coast paved highway, Fort Wayne was "Gateway to the West". Located on the continental divide between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico watersheds, Fort Wayne is the "Summit City". A home of many and diverse denominations, and enough wealth to build facilities for them, Fort Wayne is the "City of Churches". Look Magazine called Fort Wayne the "Happiest City".

Reader's Digest called Fort Wayne "The City That Saved Itself" when volunteers took extraordinary steps in flood fighting. Fort Wayne has saved itself economically as well. In the 1980s, major employer International Harvester imploded, closing their New Haven plant. Lincoln National Corporation, an insurance giant, left the city of its founding and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to be closer to capital markets, or perhaps it was because their new president was drawn to bright lights. Magnavox moved their consumer electronics business to Tennessee. Bowmar, inventor of the handheld calculator, filed for bankruptcy in 1975. Despite all those setbacks, Fort Wayne has not seen major drops in population as so many Rustbelt cities have, with a city population of an estimated 252,000, as of 2006; and a metro population of 502,141, as of the 2004 update of the 2000 census.

Fort Wayne was named for a fort, built in 1794 by Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne. (Confusingly enough, the US Army built another Fort Wayne years later, but the city at that location calls itself Detroit, Michigan.) The fort was built next to Chief Little Turtle's community of Kekionga, largest of all Miami tribe villages, where the St. Joseph River and St. Marys River join to form the Maumee River.