Indiana

Also see Specific Destinations, Travel and Location Humor.

Page Toppers

Back Home in Indiana
I Dream of Indiana
I Miss My Indiana
In an Inn in Indiana
Indiana Morning
Indiana Road
The Welcome Mat's Always Out

Quotes

I would see more flags in front of the service stations, banks, and houses of Richmond than anywhere else on my journey. (Bill Moyers)
Summer in northwest Indiana has been known to produce wistful longings for hell. (Bill Moyers)
Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies. (Sydney Pollack)

Indiana Symbols

Nicknames: Crossroads of America, Hoosier state
Slogan: The Welcome Mat's Always Out
Motto: Crossroads of America
Song: On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away
Poet Laureate: James Whitcomb Riley (born in a two-room log cabin in Greenfield)
Poem: Indiana (by Arthur Franklin Mapes)
Bird: Cardinal
Tree: Tulip Tree (Yellow Poplar)
Flower: Peony
Pie: Hoosier Pie (sugar cream pie)
Rock: Limestone
Pro Sports Teams: IN Pacers (men's basketball), Indianapolis Colts (football)

Facts About Indiana

Capital: Indianapolis
Residents: Indianans, Indianians, Hoosiers
State Name Origin: it means "land of Indians"
Admitted to Statehood: 11 Dec 1816
Order of Admission: 19th state
Length: 270 miles
Width: 140 miles
Area: 36,418 square miles
Size Rank: 38
Number of Counties: 92
Shoreline: 41 miles (Lake Michigan)
Streams and Rivers: 35,673 miles
Geographic Center: 14 miles NNW of Indianapolis in Marion Co.
Mean Elevation: 700 feet
Highest Point: Hoosier Hill in Wayne Co., 1,257 feet
Lowest Point: Southwest boundary in Posey Co., 320 feet
Agricultural Products: corn, soybeans, livestock
Commercial Products: transportation equipment, electronic equipment, industrial machinery, iron, steel, other metal products, coal
Average Annual Rainfall: 39.1 inches
Average Winter High Temperature: 25 degrees
Record Low Temperature: -36 degrees (19 Jan 1994 New Whiteland)
Average Summer High Temperature: 80 degrees
Record High Temperature: 116 degrees (14 Jul 1936 Collegeville)
Official Languages: English (since 1984), American Sign Language (since 1995)
More information about Indiana

from On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away

(Paul Dresser)

Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash,
From the fields there comes the breath of new mown hay.
Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming,
On the banks of the Wabash, far away.

Indiana

(Arthur Franklin Mapes)

God crowned her hills with beauty,
Gave her lakes and winding streams,
Then He edged them all with woodlands
As the setting for our dreams.
Lovely are her moonlit rivers,
Shadowed by the sycamores,
Where the fragrant winds of Summer
Play along the willowed shores.
I must roam those wooded hillsides,
I must heed the native call,
For a pagan voice within me
Seems to answer to it all.
I must walk where squirrels scamper
Down a rustic old rail fence,

Where a choir of birds is singing
In the woodland . . . green and dense.
I must learn more of my homeland
For it's paradise to me,
There's no haven quite as peaceful,
There's no place I'd rather be.
Indiana . . . is a garden
Where the seeds of peace have grown,
Where each tree, and vine, and flower
Has a beauty . . . all its own.
Lovely are the fields and meadows,
That reach out to hills that rise
Where the dreamy Wabash River
Wanders on . . . through paradise.

Items of Interest

The first long-distance auto race in the U.S. was held May 30, 1911, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The winner averaged 75 miles an hour and won a prize of $14,000. Today the average speed is over 167 miles an hour and the prize is more than $1.2 million. Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the site of the Indianapolis 500, held every Memorial Day weekend. The race is 200 laps or 500 miles long.
The Studebaker Company of South Bend was once the nation's largest producer of horse-drawn wagons. It later developed into a multimillion-dollar automobile manufacturer.
Indiana has more miles of Interstate Highway per square mile than any other state and major highways intersect there than in any other state.
From 1900 to 1920 more than 200 different makes of cars were produced in IN. Duesenbergs, Auburns, Stutzes, and Maxwells are prize antiques today.
Explorers Lewis and Clark set out from Fort Vincennes on their exploration of the Northwest Territory.
The first professional baseball game was played in Fort Wayne on May 4, 1871.
Santa Claus, Indiana receives over one half million letters and requests at Christmas time.
Historic Parke County has 32 covered bridges and is the Covered Bridge Capital of the world.
More than a hundred species of trees are native to Indiana. When the first settlers arrive more than 80 percent of Indiana was covered with forest. Now only 17 percent of the state is forested.
Southern Indiana has one of the richest deposits of top-quality limestone found anywhere in the world. New York City's Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the Pentagon, the U.S. Treasury, a dozen other government buildings in Washington D.C. and fourteen state capitols are built from this sturdy, beautiful Indiana limestone.
In 1934 Chicago Gangster John Dillinger escaped the Lake Country Jail in Crown Point by using a "pistol" he had carved from a wooden block.
Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker, aka Madame J.C. Walker, was one of the nation's first woman millionaires. In 1905 she developed a conditioning treatment for straightening hair. Starting with door-to-door sales she amassed a fortune.
Fountain City in Wayne County was known as the "Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad." Levi and Katie Coffin estimated they provided overnight lodging for more than 2,000 runaway slaves who were making their way north to Canada in the years before the Civil War.

Notable Natives

Some of these were born here, others just lived a while in the state.

George Ade - humorist (Kentland)
Leon Ames - actor (Portland)
Anne Baxter - actress (Michigan City)
Albert J. Beveridge - public official, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Larry Bird - basketball player (French Lick)
Bill Blass - fashion designer (Fort Wayne)
Syvanus F. Bower - designed the world's first practical gasoline pump in Fort Wayne
Hoagy Carmichael - composer, songwriter (Bloomington)
Jim Davis - cartoonist, creator of Garfield
James Dean (1941-1965) - actor, best know for Rebel Without a Cause (Marion)
Eugene V. Debs - Socialist leader (Terre Haute)
Theodore Dreiser - author (Terre Haute)
Richard Gatling - invented the rapid-fire machine gun in 1862
Bernard F. Gimbel - merchant (Vincennes)
Virgil "Gus" Grissom - astronaut (Mitchell)
Marcella Gruelle - created the Raggedy Ann doll in 1914
Alfred Bertram Guthrie - author (Bedford)
Phil Harris - actor, band leader (Linton)
John Milton Hay - diplomat (Salem)
Benjamin Harrison - U.S. president
Thomas Hendricks - U.S. Senator, a U.S. representative, governor, Vice President under Grover Cleveland
James R. Hoffa - labor leader (Brazil)
Anton "Tony" Hulman - businessman, owner of Indianapolis Speedway
Michael Jackson - singer (Gary)
Buck Jones - actor (Vincennes)
David Letterman (1947- ) - television host, comedian (Indianapolis)
Eli Lilly - pharmaceutical businessman (Indianapolis)
Abraham Lincoln - U.S. president (moved to Spencer Co. IN at age 7)
Carole Lombard - actress (Fort Wayne)
Shelley Long - actress (Fort Wayne)
Marjorie Main - actress (Acton)
James McCracken - tenor (Gary)
John T. McCutcheon - cartoonist
John Cougar Mellencamp - singer, songwriter (Seymour)
Joaquin Miller - poet (Liberty)
Thomas Marshall - U.S. vice president
Paul Osborn - playwright (Evansville)
Jane Pauley - television personality
Cole Porter - composer, lyricist (Peru)
Gene Stratton Porter - author
Ernest Taylor "Ernie" Pyle - WWII journalist, 1944 Pulitzer Prize-winner in foreign correspondence (Dana)
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle - U.S. vice president (Indianapolis)
James Whitcomb Riley - Poet Laureate of IN (Greenfield)
Oscar Robertson - basketball player
Ned Rorem - composer (Richmond)
Paul Samuelson - won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1970
Red Skelton - comedian (Vincennes)
Mark Spitz - swimmer, won seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics (more than any other athlete in a single year)
T.C. Steele - impressionist painter
Rex Stout - mystery writer (Noblesville)
Clement Studebaker - auto and wagon maker
Booth Tarkington - author (Indianapolis)
Twyla Tharp - dancer, choreographer (Portland)
Forrest Tucker - actor (Plainfield)
Harold Urey - 1934 Nobel Prize-winner in chemistry for his discovery of deuterium (Walkerton)
Gilbert Van Camp - Indianapolis grocer, creator of Van Camp Pork and Beans
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922- ) - author (Indianapolis)
Jessamyn West - author (North Vernon)
Willis Van Devanter - Supreme Court justice (Marion)
Wendell Wilkie - attorney, political leader (Elwood)
John Wooden - basketball coach
Wilbur Wright - co-inventor of the airplane (Millville)

The Indiana State Flag
The flag, adopted in 1917, has nineteen stars and a flaming torch in gold or buff on a blue background. Thirteen stars form an outer circle representing the thirteen original states. The five stars in an arc above the torch represent the states admitted prior to IN. The nineteenth star, representing IN is larger and above the flame of the torch. The word "Indiana" forms an arch above the largest star. The flaming torch represents liberty and enlightenment.

You know you're from Indiana if...

Detassling was your first job. Bailing hay, your second.
Down south to you means Kentucky.
Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
Everyone knows who the town cops are, where they live, and whether they're at home or on duty.
Getting stuck by a train is a legitimate excuse for being late to school.
High school basketball games draw bigger crowds on the weekend than movie theaters, IF you have a movie theater.
Indianapolis is the BIG CITY.
Kids and dogs ride in the passenger seats of cars and the backs of pickups.
The biggest question of your youth was IU or Purdue.
The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires six for local sports.
The Wabash River is the biggest body of water near your house.
There's actually a college near you named "Ball State."
To you, tenderloin is not an expensive cut of beef, but a big, salty, breaded piece of pork served on a bun with pickle.
You can name every one of Bobbie Knight's exploits over the last few years.
You can repeat the scores of the last eight NBA games, but unless the MVP is a Hoosier, you are not sure who he is.
You can say "French Lick" without laughing out loud.
You can see at least two basketball hoops from your yard.
You carry jumper cables in your car regularly.
You could never figure out spring forward-fall back, so screw Daylight Savings Time!
You could stack hay, swim in the pond to clean off and then have the strength to play a couple of games of hoops, all in the same barn lot on the same day.
You drink pop.
You have no problem spelling or pronouncing Terre Haute.
You install security lights on your house and garage, then leave both of them unlocked.
You know Batesville is the casket making capital of the world--and you're proud of it.
You know several different definitions as to what Hoosier really is.
You know several people who have hit a deer.
You know that baling wire was the predecessor to duct tape.
You know that strangers are the only ones who come to your front door.
You know what the phrase "knee-high by the Fourth of July" means.
You say things like catty-wampus and katty corner.
You think nothing of it in spring and fall to be stuck behind a farm implement driving on the roads. You just hope it's not a hog truck or a manure spreader.
You think the state Bird is Larry.
Your feelings get hurt whenever someone points out the acronym for Purdue University is PU
Your school classes were canceled because of cold.
Your school classes were canceled because of heat.
You've been to the Covered Bridge Festival. You took back roads to get there. Why sit in traffic?
You've heard of Euchre, you know how to play Euchre, and you are the master of Euchre.
You've seen a running car, with nobody in it, in the parking lot of the grocery store, no matter what time of year it is.

Songs about Indiana

Back Home Again in Indiana - Milt Jackson (1999)
Banks of the Wabash - The Original Salty Dogs (2000)
Back Home in Indiana - The Country Gentlemen (1989)
Banks of the Wabash - The Original Salty Dogs (2000)
Big White House in Indiana - Larry Croce (1977)
Can't Get Indiana Off My Mind - The Original Salty Dogs (2000)
Girl From Indiana - The Overlanders (1966)
Hoosier Girl - Straight No Chaser (2005)
Hoosier Sweetheart - The Original Salty Dogs (2000)
I Dream of Indiana - Eddy Duchin (1932)
I Miss My Indiana - The Boys From Indiana (1974)
In a Little Inn Way Out in Indiana - Elton Britt (1936)
In an Inn in Indiana - Gordon Jenkins Orchestra (1955)
Indiana - Jon McLaughlin (2007)
Indiana Girl - Pat Boone (1975)
Indiana Road - Fred Eaglesmith (1987)
Indiana Stroll - Jason Myers (2002)
Indiana Waltz - Jack Scott (1960)
Indiana Wants Me - R. Dean Taylor (1971)
Indiana Woman - Alex Harvey (1973)
Kokomo - The Beach Boys (1988)
On the Banks of the Wabash - Mike Swan (2002)
On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away - Molly Watson (1998)
Something's Wrong in Indiana - Troy Shondell (1969)
Sweet Indiana Home - The Original Salty Dogs (2000)
We'll Head Back to Harlan - The Boys from Indiana (1985)
When I'm in My Indiana Home - Redd Stewart (1949)