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Navigating Two Time Zones Is a Way of Life in the Hoosier State

Indiana is one of 15 states divided into two time zones. But nowhere is the division quite so intentional—or quite so historically contentious.

By Mark Wolf  |  October 30, 2023

It is late September 2002, the season premiere of “The West Wing,” and Indiana time is about to get its close-up.

Three White House staffers are on a campaign trip in rural Indiana. While scrambling to make a tight connection to their return flight on Air Force One, they neglect to notice they’ve crossed into a county that doesn’t observe daylight saving time. Their watches are now an hour behind the local time. They miss their flight. Sputtering ensues by people in suits.

“What do ... ? What do ... ? People, they just ... They reset their watches when they commute?” blusters communications director Toby Ziegler, played by Richard Schiff, who won an Emmy for his role.

“They just change their watches every time they cross a time zone?”

And you could imagine a Greek chorus of Hoosiers responding, “Well, of course we do.”

The takeaway from the scene: Navigating Indiana’s time can be a bit of a lift, especially for D.C. dwellers unaccustomed to being dropped into what they consider “flyover country.”

Indiana is one of 15 states divided into two time zones. But nowhere, it seems fair to say, is the division quite so intentional—or quite so historically contentious. Over the years, bills to realign the state’s time zones and deal with daylight saving time have come and gone, and at least one lawmaker’s vote on DST might have cost him his seat. But, legislation and public hearings aside, Hoosiers have come to accept their unique, if complicated, perspective on keeping time.

Two Time Zones, Many Voices

Of the state’s 92 counties, 80 are in the Eastern time zone. The other 12 are on Central time and huddled in two groups of six each, one in the state’s northwest corner near Chicago, to which the region is closely tied, and the other in the southwest corner to match Evansville, the state’s third-largest city and an eco-nomic driver in the area.

Rep. Earl L. Harris Jr. was born and raised in East Chicago, Ind., and now represents Indiana House District 2 in Lake County, which abuts Chicago and is one of the six northwestern counties that observe Central time.

“(Chicago) is the No. 3 market in the country, and living right across the state line, we get Chicago media and television, so there is definitely a connectivity,” says Harris, a Democrat.

“(Chicago) is the No. 3 market in the country, and living right across the state line, we get Chicago media and television, so there is definitely a connectivity.”

—Indiana Rep. Earl L. Harris Jr.

“During COVID, a lot of things were scheduled on Zoom, and that became an issue for people. When we’re in session (the state Capitol in Indianapolis is on Eastern time), that’s the game you have to play,” he says. “I remember one Zoom (meeting) where I was logged on and was by myself. I called my office in Indianapolis, and they reached out to the person I was supposed to be in contact with, and they didn’t realize there was a time difference.”

The biggest burden falls on people who live close to the Eastern-Central divide and travel frequently across county lines. Harris says when he gives directions to someone coming from or going to a county on Eastern time, he always reminds them of the time difference.

“You get in a car and drive 10 minutes, and you’re in a completely different time zone. That has to be hard for them, playing that back-and-forth,” he says.

Related: This story first appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of NCSL’s State Legislatures magazine.

Indiana’s business community strongly favors the time-zone status quo—Central time for the northwestern and southwestern counties and Eastern time for the rest of the state.

“We surveyed our members and, overwhelmingly, those who are not in the northwest or southwest wanted to be on Eastern time,” says Kevin Brinegar, president and CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. “They had more business relationships there and would rather have an extra hour of evening daylight than morning daylight. When we didn’t observe daylight saving time in Indianapolis, it would start getting light at 5:30 in the morning. Our people said more people are up and wanting to do things at 8 or 9 at night than at 5:30 in the morning.”

He points out that there are fewer traffic accidents in daylight hours than there are in darkness, particularly for the elderly. “The other reason is more of the U.S. population, both individuals and businesses, is located in the Eastern time zone than any of the other time zones in the continental U.S.”

downtown south bend

No ‘Time Police’

Reaching back to the early 20th century, time in Indiana has done anything but stand still.

Indiana was placed on Central time back in 1918, when the federal government established time zones for the nation. That changed in 1961 when the eastern half of the state was moved to Eastern time, then again in 1969 when the entire state shifted to Eastern time, except for the clusters of counties in the northwest and southwest corners, which were placed on Central time. The 12 counties on Central time observed daylight saving time, while the rest of the state did not.

Pretty much.

“There’s an interesting bit of history,” Brinegar says, “that when we were not observing daylight saving time (every-where but in the Central time outliers), there were 10 counties—five around Louisville and five around Cincinnati—which observed Eastern Daylight Time illegally because they felt they were more connected economically to Louisville and Cincinnati than they were to Indianapolis and the rest of the state.” On their own, he emphasizes, they chose to observe Eastern time.

“And no one forced them to not observe it,” he adds, “because there are no time police.”

Hoosiers, especially those who lived near the time lines, became fluent in “fast time” for Eastern and “slow time” for Central and for double-checking the meeting time (“Your time or my time?”) for cross-zone appointments.

Over the years, the General Assembly passed several Central/Eastern/daylight saving time bills. They were largely re-pealed, ignored, vetoed or overridden. A 1949 bill to keep the state on Central time and outlaw DST appeared to be doomed until one lawmaker reached over the gallery railing and physically stopped the official clock at 9 p.m., breaking it in the process, according to The Indianapolis Star. The bill passed but had no enforcement power and was ignored.

The legislative clock finally wound down in 2005 when lawmakers voted to have the entire state observe DST, doing away with the issue that so perplexed those “West Wing” out-of-towners. The bill passed the House by a single vote, and one representative was presumed to have lost his seat after changing his vote from no to yes. That leaves only Arizona and Hawaii as the states not observing DST.

And there’s this little DST wrinkle: Indiana is home to an estimated 63,000 Amish residents, a concentration behind only Pennsylvania and Ohio. According to the website Amish365, many Amish do not observe daylight saving time. 

Sen. Eric Bassler represents District 39 in southern Indiana. Each of his counties is on Eastern time, but one is adjacent to a county on Central time. He has favored all of Indiana being on Central time largely for health and safety reasons.

“It’s difficult for young people to get up and go to school when it’s still dark out,” says Bassler, a Republican. “In parts of Indiana, it’s not daylight until after 8 (a.m.) and most schools start by then.”

Kids stand at street corners and country road crossings waiting to be picked up by school buses in the dark, he says. “From a very pragmatic point of view, if you go outside and look up in the sky, the sun should be about overhead at noon. In Indiana, it’s way off from that. You’re out of sync by an hour.”

Public Hearings

The U.S. Transportation Department, which has charge over the nation’s time zones, held four public hearings throughout the state in November 2005, shortly after the passage of the daylight saving time law, on requests by 19 counties to shift from Eastern to Central time.

The hearings, which went on for as long as six hours, according to a department report, produced varying rationales for changing or staying in the current time zones. The department’s guiding principle was whether changing a county’s time zone would benefit the “convenience of commerce,” with several mitigating factors.

“Change is hard ... No matter where you draw the line (between Central and Eastern), some of those counties would want to be in the other time zone.”

—Indiana Sen. Eric Bassler

Many who testified said they would prefer a single time zone, whether East-ern or Central. Anecdotes centered on the ways living close to a time zone boundary can affect family issues, including school activities. One mother was concerned about leaving her autistic son in the dark to wait for a bus when she had to leave for work. In each time zone, arguments both pro and con covered sunrise and sunset times, primetime TV schedules and business concerns, including import-export and delivery issues.

There was one poem, one song—and one reference to that “West Wing” episode.

Bills occasionally have been filed to move the state to a single time zone, but Brinegar, with the chamber of commerce, who reads every bill filed, says the issue is moot.

“Overwhelmingly, this issue is settled in Indiana, and it’s set where we are,” he says.

Even those who can make a case for Indiana being entirely in one time zone aren’t optimistic.

“Change is hard,” Bassler says. “Indiana’s in a challenging geographic position. No matter where you draw the line (between Central and Eastern), some of those counties would want to be in the other time zone.

“I don’t think it will change in my lifetime.”

Mark Wolf is a senior editor at NCSL. He grew up in an Indiana county that observed Eastern time, about a dozen miles from a county that observed Central time. His mother, Katie Wolf, served 16 years in the Indiana General Assembly, including 14 years in the Senate.

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