The State of Indiana is the 19th U.S. state and is located in the midwestern region of the United States of America. With about 6.3 million residents, it is ranked 15th in population and 17th in population density.
Indiana is ranked 38th in land area.
Indiana is a diverse state with a few large urban areas and a number of smaller industrial cities.
It is known nationally for its professional sports teams, the Indianapolis Colts, champions of the 2007 NFL Super Bowl, the NBA Indiana Pacers and for the Indianapolis 500 motorsports race, the largest single-day sporting event in the world that is held annually over the Memorial Day weekend, and for a strong basketball tradition, often called Hoosier Hysteria.
Residents of Indiana are called Hoosiers. Although many stories are told, the origin of the term is unknown.
The state's name means "Land of the Indians", or simply "Indian Land". The name dates back to at least 1800, when Indiana Territory was created, at which time the territory was unceded Indian land.
Angel Mounds State Historic Site, one of the best preserved prehistoric Native American sites in the United States, can be found in south-western Indiana near Evansville.
Geography
Indiana is bounded on the north by Lake Michigan and the state of Michigan; on the east by Ohio; on the south by Kentucky, with which it shares the Ohio River as a border; and on the west by Illinois. Indiana is one of the Great Lakes states.
The northern boundary of the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was originally defined to be a latitudinal line drawn through the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan. Since such a line would not provide Indiana with usable frontage on the lake, its northern border was shifted ten miles (16 km) north. The northern borders of Ohio and Illinois were also shifted from this original plan.
The 475 mile (764 km) long Wabash River bisects the state from northeast to southwest before flowing south, mostly along the Indiana-Illinois border. The river has given Indiana a few theme songs, such as On the Banks of the Wabash, The Wabash Cannonball and Back Home Again, In Indiana.
The Wabash is also the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi; 400 miles (640 km) from the Huntington dam to the Ohio River. The White River (a tributary of the Wabash, which is a tributary of the Ohio) zigzags through central Indiana.
There are 24 Indiana state parks, nine man-made reservoirs, and hundreds of lakes in the state.
Areas under the control and protection of the National Park Service or the United States Forest Service include:
* George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Vincennes
* Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore near Michigan City
* Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Lincoln City
* Hoosier National Forest in Bedford
Climate
Most of Indiana has a humid continental climate (Koppen climate classification Dfa), with hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters.
The extreme southern portions of the state border on a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa) with somewhat milder winters.
Summertime maximum temperatures average around 85 °F (29 °C) with cooler nights around 60 °F (16 °C). Winters are a little more variable, but generally cool to cold temperatures with all but the northern part of the state averaging above freezing for the maximum January temperature, and the minimum temperature below 20 °F (-8 °C) for most of the state.
The state receives a good amount of precipitation, 40 inches (1,000 mm) annually statewide, in all four seasons, with March through August being slightly wetter.
The state does have its share of severe weather, both winter storms and thunderstorms. While generally not receiving as much snow as some states farther north, the state does have occasional blizzards, some due to lake effect snow.
Two major paralyzing snowstorms bear merit. The January, 1978 Blizzard, which affected almost the entire state, and the December, 2004 Blizzard, which primarily affected the Ohio Valley and later caused the severe flooding of the White, Wabash, and the Ohio Rivers in January, 2005.
The state averages around 40-50 days of thunderstorms per year, with March and April being the period of most severe storms. While not considered part of Tornado Alley, Indiana is the Great Lakes state which is most vulnerable to tornadic activity.
In fact, three of the most severe tornado outbreaks in U.S. history affected Indiana, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965 and the Super Outbreak of 1974.
The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 killed 25 people, 20 people in Vanderburgh County and 5 in Warrick County.
History
The area of Indiana has been settled since before the development of the Hopewell culture (ca. 100–400 CE).
It was part of the Mississippian culture from roughly the year 1000 up to 1400.
The specific Native American tribes that inhabited this territory at that time were primarily the Miami and the Shawnee.
The area was claimed for New France in the 17th century, handed over to the Kingdom of Great Britain as part of the settlement at the end of the French and Indian War, given to the United States after the American Revolution, soon after which it became part of the Northwest Territory, then the Indiana Territory, and joined the Union in 1816 as the 19th state. Indiana fought on the Union side during the American Civil War and prohibited slavery. See also Northwest Indian War.
Pioneer Era
On June 29, 1816, Indiana adopted a constitution, and on December 11, 1816, became the 19th State to join the Union.
Indiana filled up from the Ohio River north. Migration, mostly from Kentucky and Ohio, was so rapid that by 1820 the population was 147,176, and by 1830 the sales of public lands for the previous decade reached 3,588,000 acres (5,600 sq mi; 14,500 km²) and the population was 343,031.
It had more than doubled since 1820. The first state capital was in the southern Indiana city of Corydon.
Economy
The total gross state product in 2005 was US$214 billion in 2000 chained dollars.
Indiana's per capita income, as of 2005, was US$31,150. A high percentage of Indiana's income is from manufacturing.
The Calumet region of northwest Indiana is the largest steel producing area in the U.S. Steelmaking itself requires generating very large amounts of electric power. Indiana's other manufactures include pharmaceuticals and medical devices, automobiles, electrical equipment, transportation equipment, chemical products, rubber, petroleum and coal products, and factory machinery.
Despite its reliance on manufacturing, Indiana has been much less affected by declines in traditional Rust Belt manufactures than many of its neighbors.
The explanation appears to be certain factors in the labor market.
First, much of the heavy manufacturing, such as industrial machinery and steel, requires highly skilled labor, and firms are often willing to locate where hard-to-train skills already exist.
Second, Indiana's labor force is located primarily in medium-sized and smaller cities rather than in very large and expensive metropolises. This makes it possible for firms to offer somewhat lower wages for these skills than would normally be paid.
In other words, firms often see in Indiana a chance to obtain higher than average skills at lower than average wages.
Indiana is home to the international headquarters of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly in Indianapolis as well as the headquarters of Mead Johnson Nutritionals, a division of Bristol-Myers Squibb, in Evansville. Elkhart, in the north, has also had a strong economic base of pharmaceuticals, though this has changed over the past decade with the closure of Whitehall Laboratories in the 1990s and the planned drawdown of the large Bayer complex, announced in late 2005.
Overall, Indiana ranks fifth among all U.S. states in total sales and shipments of pharmaceutical products and second highest in the number of biopharmaceutical related jobs.
Medical device manufacturers include Zimmer in Warsaw and Cook in Bloomington.
The state is located within the Corn Belt and the state's agricultural methods and principal farm outputs reflect this: a feedlot-style system raising corn to fatten hogs and cattle. Soybeans are also a major cash crop.
Its proximity to large urban centers, such as Chicago, assure that dairying, egg production, and specialty horticulture occur. Specialty crops include melons, tomatoes, grapes, and mint.
Most of the original land was not prairie and had to be cleared of deciduous trees. Many parcels of woodland remain and support a furniture-making sector in the southern portion of the state.
Indiana is becoming a leading state in the production of biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. Indiana now has 12 ethanol and 4 biodiesel plants located in the state.
Reynolds, located north of Lafayette is now known as BioTown, USA. The town is experimenting with using biofuels and organic fuels, such as those made with manure, to power the town.
In mining, Indiana is probably best known for its decorative limestone from the southern, hilly portion of the state, especially from Lawrence County (the home area of Apollo I astronaut Gus Grissom).
One of the many public buildings faced with this stone is The Pentagon, and after the September 11, 2001 attacks, a special effort was made by the mining industry of Indiana to replace those damaged walls with as nearly identical type and cut of material as the original facing.
There are also large coal mines in the southern portion of the state. Like most Great Lakes states, Indiana has small to medium operating petroleum fields; the principal location of these today is in the extreme southwest, though operational oil derricks can be seen on the outskirts of Terre Haute.
Indiana's economy is considered to be one of the most business-friendly in the U.S. This is due in part to its conservative business climate, low business taxes, relatively low union membership, and labor laws.
The doctrine of at-will employment, whereby an employer can terminate an employee for any or no reason, is in force.
Indiana has a flat state income tax rate of 3.4%.
Many Indiana counties also collect income tax. The state sales tax rate is 6%. Property taxes are imposed on both real and personal property in Indiana and are administered by the Department of Local Government Finance.
Property is subject to taxation by a variety of taxing units (schools, counties, townships, cities and towns, libraries), making the total tax rate the sum of the tax rates imposed by all taxing units in which a property is located.
