Northwest Indiana: A Little Different

Time and again I have disagreed with the majority opinion regarding how we ought to define the Midwest.  Much of Ohio and Michigan just do not qualify to be truly part of the Midwest, with a good chunk of Wisconsin and bits of Minnesota not quite making the cut either.  Geographically, climatically, botanically, politically, culturally, and in so many other ways, these places are a distinct region better named for the Lakes which they embrace, and for the northern lands which they form the southern edge of.  Just beside them, however, are places that take on a different character almost immediately.  One such place would be Indiana.

Indiana has what one would definitely come to expect from the Midwest, even as it shares a few features in common with the Lakes region and the American South.  In the northwestern corner are a variety of human and natural features which mark a very rapid transition into something Midwestern.

Just south of Hobart, Indiana.

While Ohio and Michigan have their fair share of farms and quite open rural country, Indiana is positively dominated by it.  Even before the second born of our continent changed her face into what we have these days, Indiana was the first place heading west where one would find open prairies, some large enough so that a treeline on the horizon was barely noticeable.  The result was that settlers took quite readily to open spaces with excellent soils, and the place became a state as quickly as 1816.  They and their descendants formed an agrarian minded populace that has since become associated with the "heartland", and everything from their accents to domestic architecture reflect this quite well.

That said, the state was (and is) something of a highway as much as a destination.  People came to Indiana on their way to something else as often as they broke ground, enough so that the place has been self-proclaimed as the "crossroads of America".  In the northwestern corner of the state, this is perhaps all the more true.  While most western migration routes followed the main rivers and more southerly wagon trails, a connection to the Great Lakes was important enough that Indiana demanded a little bit more of it from Michigan, a territory which would have claimed land as far south as Gary.  The connection to Lake Michigan is indeed very tenuous compared to the rest of transit networks in the state, a situation reflected in the relative  lack of a drainage basin emptying into big blue.  Mere miles is all the grand lake can fetch in some places, while the Mighty Mississippi steals the rest.  Mere miles, however, is enough to produce a part of the state just a little different enough to make it a very special place.  This is dune country, and this is more of what we will explore tomorrow.