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Introduction:
The State of Indiana (IPA: /ˌɪn.diˈɒ.nə/) 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 for the Indianapolis 500 automobile race, held annually over the Memorial Day weekend, and a strong basketball tradition, often called Hoosier Hysteria. Residents of Indiana are called Hoosiers.
The state's name means "Land of the Indians" and Angel Mounds State Historic Site, one of the best preserved prehistoric Native American sites in the United States, can be found in southern Indiana.
Capital: Indianapolis
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 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 and has given Indiana a few theme songs, On the Banks of the Wabash, The Wabash Cannonball and Back Home Again, In Indiana. 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 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
Northern Indiana
The northwest corner of the state is part of the Chicago metropolitan area and has nearly one million residents. Gary, and the cities and towns that make up the northern half of Lake, Porter, and La Porte Counties bordering on Lake Michigan, are effectively commuter suburbs of Chicago. Porter and Lake counties are commonly referred to as "The Region". They are all in the Central Time Zone along with Chicago. NICTD owns and operates the South Shore Line, a commuter rail line that runs electric-powered trains between South Bend and Chicago. Sand dunes and heavy industry share the shoreline of Lake Michigan in northern Indiana.
The Kankakee River, which winds through northern Indiana, serves somewhat as a demarcating line between suburban northwest Indiana and the rest of the state.
The South Bend metropolitan area in north central Indiana, is the center of commerce in the region better known as Michiana. Fort Wayne, the state's second largest city, is located in the northeastern part of the state.
Central Indiana
The state capital, Indianapolis, is situated in the central portion of the state. It is intersected by numerous Interstates and U.S. highways, giving the state its motto as "The Crossroads of America". Other cities located within the area include Anderson, Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Crawfordsville, Danville, Fishers, Lafayette, Lebanon, Muncie, Richmond, and Terre Haute.
Rural areas in the central portion of the state are typically composed of a patchwork of fields and forested areas.
Southern Indiana
Evansville, the third largest city in Indiana, is located in the southwestern corner of the state. It is located in a tri-state area that includes Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. The southeastern cities of Clarksville, Jeffersonville, and New Albany are part of the Louisville metropolitan area.
Southern Indiana is a mixture of farmland and forest. The Hoosier National Forest is a 200,000 acre (80,900 ha) nature preserve in south central Indiana. Southern Indiana's topography is more varied and generally contains more hills and geographic variation than the northern portion, such as the "Knobs," a series of 1,000 ft. hills that run parallel to the Ohio River in south-central Indiana. The limestone geology of Southern Indiana has created numerous caves and one of the largest limestone quarry regions in the USA.
For sixty years, from 1890 to 1950, the United States Census found the center of population to lie in southern Indiana.
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. 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.
Economy - overview:
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.
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.
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.
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