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Crossroads
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The Crossroads of America, on this Moment of Indiana History.
Although it’s certainly not the geographic center of the continental
United States, the state of Indiana has nonetheless played the role of
“The Crossroads of America”. The Indiana General Assembly’s
vote to make that motto official in 1937 came almost twenty years before
the authorization of the Interstate Highway System, which would make Indianapolis
a hub for automotive traffic. By that time, Indiana had already played
a pivotal role in the passage of people, goods and services across the
country for centuries. The state’s waterways served as a useful
conduit for the French traders trafficking in pelts between Louisiana
and Canada. Later, the state’s northern access coupled with strong
pockets of abolitionist sentiment served to make it a valuable stretch
of the Underground Railroad. But the east-west axis was perhaps even more
well-worn. Nineteenth-century pioneers set off in mule-drawn packet boats
down the Wabash and Erie Canal, and those in covered wagons traversed
the Old Pike, a clearing through the forest from Maryland to Illinois.
Eventually paved, that path came to be known as the Historic National
Road, and was ultimately developed into Route 40, extending all the way
to San Francisco. In the 1920’s that premier transcontinental highway
met a formidable perpendicular route in Route 41, newly connecting Chicago
and Miami. Their meeting place, at the intersection of Seventh and Wabash
Streets in downtown Terre Haute, became known as “The Crossroads
of America”.
Since that moniker has been applied to the state as a whole, Indiana has
maintained its identity as the nation’s thoroughfare. Indianapolis
is connected with the rest of the country by means of five Interstate
highways that intersect there. And since the opening of the St. Lawrence
Seaway in 1959, and Burns Harbor on Lake Michigan in 1970, Indiana’s
resources and manufactured goods may be transported anywhere in the world
by ocean liner. Indiana’s state quarter, first minted in 2002, bears
the image of an Indy race car and the inscription, “Crossroads of
America”.
This Moment of Indiana History is a production of the Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations in association with the Indiana Historical Society. More information is available on-line at “moment of Indiana history.org.”
Writer: Yaël Ksander
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