12 Things Hoosiers Grew Up Believing Every State Had

Order a breaded pork tenderloin outside Indiana, and you might get a blank stare.

Back home, it’s a diner staple, and you never thought twice about it.

Here are the things Hoosiers grew up believing every state had, and where each one came from.

1. Oversized High School Gyms

New Castle’s gym was long called the biggest high school gym in the country, at 9,325 seats, a count that included temporary seating.

Indiana Public Media reported in 2019 that a seat count put Seymour High School’s gym at 8,228 seats.

In that ranking, Seymour came in first and New Castle third.

Many locals assume schools in other states have gyms on that scale.

2. Hoosier Hysteria

Hoosier Hysteria’s best-known moment came in 1954, when Milan won the state basketball title.

Milan beat four-time state champion Muncie Central in the title game.

An estimated 40,000 people came to Milan to celebrate afterward.

The story later inspired the 1986 film Hoosiers.

Until 1998, the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) ran the state basketball tournament as a single-class event.

Size didn’t matter.

If you went to a small school, you could end up facing the biggest school in the state.

In 1998, the IHSAA split that tournament into four classes based on enrollment.

3. Indy 500 Traditions

Indianapolis 500 winners celebrate with milk, a tradition that began after Louis Meyer marked his 1936 win with buttermilk.

Drivers choose whole, skim, or 2% milk before the race.

“Back Home Again in Indiana” became a pre-race staple in 1946, when James Melton sang it.

4. Breaded Pork Tenderloin

Indiana’s breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is often traced to Nick’s Kitchen in Huntington, a diner Nick Freienstein opened in 1908.

Freienstein sold a recipe similar to wienerschnitzel.

That recipe is now known as the pork tenderloin sandwich.

Wienerschnitzel is pan-fried, while the tenderloin is deep-fried.

5. Indiana Limestone

The Empire State Building in New York City is clad in Indiana limestone, according to the Indiana Geological and Water Survey.

Indiana limestone also adorns the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The Salem Limestone, the formation quarried as Indiana limestone, crops out in a belt from Stinesville in Monroe County to Bedford in Lawrence County.

Near Bedford, that belt varies in width from about a mile to nearly 10 miles.

6. Two Time Zones

Indiana has two time zones, with 12 of its 92 counties on Central Time and the rest on Eastern.

In 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission moved the eastern half of Indiana to Eastern Time.

By 1969, the federal boundary left six counties in the northwest and six in the southwest on Central Time.

If you drive across Indiana, you may cross a time zone line without leaving the state.

Daylight saving time didn’t cover the whole state until 2006, when Indiana became the 48th state to observe it across the board.

7. Hoosier Word Origins

The Indiana Historical Bureau says the word Hoosier appears in an 1831 letter, though its origin is unknown.

A Vincennes Gazette letter from the same month uses the word too.

Jacob Piatt Dunn's 1907 monograph The Word Hoosier offered three possibilities, including a Southern slang term for uncouth countrymen and a root in English dialect.

A Cincinnati Republican article linked the word to Ohio River boatmen.

The bureau's blog calls popular stories, such as a frontier greeting that supposedly wore down into Hoosier, almost certainly apocryphal.

8. Town Named Santa Claus

Santa Claus, Indiana, is home to the only post office in the world with the Santa Claus name, according to the Indiana Historical Society.

The federal post office approved the town's application for a post office in 1856.

Volunteers called elves write back to children's letters, answering more than 24,000 of them in 2014.

The volunteers work at the Santa Claus Museum & Village.

Some Hoosiers figure other states have a Christmas town too.

9. Little 500 Bike Race

Indiana University (IU) has held the Little 500 bicycle race since 1951.

The first race was 200 laps around an oval track in Memorial Stadium.

Full-time undergraduates can enter.

10. Covered Bridge Country

Parke County has 31 historic covered bridges, which earned it the title "Covered Bridge Capital of the World."

The county's Covered Bridge Festival began in 1957.

The festival starts on the second Friday of October.

It runs ten days.

11. Sugar Cream Pie

According to WRTV in Indianapolis, sugar cream pie is made from six ingredients often found in a pantry, with no eggs needed.

It's also called Hoosier Pie.

The pie originated in eastern Indiana's Shaker communities, though it's often attributed to northeastern Amish communities.

12. RV Factories

In 2021, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation said Indiana manufactures nearly 80% of all recreational vehicles (RVs) in the United States and Canada.

Hoosiers often figure RV factories are just as common in other states.