9 Things That Make Indiana Feel Like Two Different States

Indiana can look like one tidy rectangle on a map.

Drive it from top to bottom, though, and the land, the weather and even the clocks change along the way.

Here’s what makes northern and southern Hoosiers feel a world apart.

1. Where the Glaciers Stopped

The glaciers of the last ice age didn’t extend to southern Indiana, according to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

Meltwater from the northern ice carved the rivers and hills that dominate the south today.

In the north, the ice retreated more quickly and left behind ridges of glacial till that are still mostly flat.

In Brown County, glaciers stopped short of the hills.

Their meltwater helped create the narrow ridges, steep slopes and deep gullies of Brown County State Park.

It covers nearly 16,000 acres.

2. Two Time Zones

Indiana has 92 counties, and 12 of them are on Central Time, according to the Indianapolis TV station WRTV.

The other 80 stay Eastern.

Those 12 counties sit in two groups, one in the northwestern tip of the state and one in the southwestern tip.

Federal rules put the dividing line on county borders.

In the north, it follows the LaPorte, Starke, Marshall, Pulaski, Jasper and Newton county lines.

In the south, it ends where Perry County meets Kentucky.

3. Lake-Effect Snow

Annual average temperature varies by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit from north to south, according to the 2022 State Climate Summary for Indiana.

Snow runs the other way.

Lake Michigan is the source of the lake-effect snow that piles up in the north.

That leaves the southwest with about a fifth as much snow as those northern spots.

4. Amish Settlements

Indiana has 68,025 Amish residents in 28 settlements, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

Only two states have more.

The largest settlement, in the Elkhart and LaGrange counties area, has 30,795 people.

That makes it the third-largest Amish settlement in the country.

Five of the country’s 12 largest are in Indiana.

The Daviess County area in southwestern Indiana has 6,490 people, roughly a fifth of the Elkhart and LaGrange total.

5. Hoosier National Forest

Hoosier National Forest covers 205,000 acres in the hills of south-central Indiana, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

That’s about 320 square miles.

It’s a mix of rolling hills, back-country trails and rural crossroad communities.

It has more than 260 miles of trails for hiking.

Those hills sit in southern Indiana, where the last ice age’s glaciers didn’t extend.

6. Indiana Dunes National Park

Indiana Dunes became a national park on Feb. 15, 2019, when Congress changed its name from Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Congress first authorized 8,330 acres for the lakeshore in 1966.

That was only the beginning.

Four expansion bills between 1976 and 1992 pushed it past 15,000 acres, a fraction of the 205,000 acres in Hoosier National Forest.

If you're coming from Chicago, the park is about an hour away, according to the National Park Service.

Even in the mostly flat north, the Hoosier Slide dune was 200 feet in height, the largest on Indiana's lakeshore.

7. Caves and Sinkholes

Indiana's mapped sinkhole areas are in southern Indiana.

The Indiana Department of Transportation names two primary karst areas, the Mitchell Plateau and the Crawford Upland.

Sinkholes there form where bedrock collapses over an underground void, and caves are voids big enough for a person to enter.

The Mitchell Plateau runs from eastern Owen County south to the Ohio River in Harrison County and into Kentucky.

In the northern two-thirds of the state, thick glacial material covers rock layers that could otherwise form karst.

The ice mattered.

8. Steel Mills

Indiana led the country in steel production for the 42nd straight year in 2016, making 24.4 million tons, the Indianapolis public media outlet WFYI reported.

That was 27 percent nationally.

The major mills sat in Gary, East Chicago and Burns Harbor, all on the south shore of Lake Michigan.

In south-central Indiana, limestone quarrying was the primary industry for most of a century.

9. Limestone Quarries

The Indiana Limestone Institute of America centers the stone in Lawrence, Monroe and Owen counties.

Many of the state's key limestone quarries are also in the Mitchell Plain.

It's called Salem Limestone.

That formation lies directly beneath the surface of the Mitchell Plain, where it can easily be quarried in open pits.

Indiana limestone clads buildings from the Empire State Building to the Pentagon, according to the institute.

If you've seen either landmark, you've seen Indiana limestone.

Clocks Before 2006

Before 2006, only about a dozen Indiana counties followed daylight saving time with the rest of the country, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Roughly 76 didn't.

Those counties switched between Eastern and Central Time whenever other states changed their clocks.

The General Assembly passed statewide daylight saving time in 2005.