OK, I guess I can understand why Hawaii and Arizona don’t observe Daylight Savings Time, (weather), but why Indiana? Why / when did they choose to not do it?
Making matters even more confusing is that some counties in Indiana do observe it, but most do not.
I’ve searched around and I can’t find an explanation of why Indianans chose to do this. I’m also at a loss to understand what possible benefit there is for them to not observe it.
Any Indianans wanna chime in?
I seem to remember reading somewhere that it had to do with farmers needing constant hours to do their farming.
Not only is Indiana one of the few states that’s split in two different time zones, but (unlike Kentucky, for example) it has major population areas in both time zones. Southeast Indiana snugs up against Louisville and Cincinatti, while the northwest part of the state clings to Chicago. The people in both those areas want to keep the same time with their across-the-state-line big cities. That means keeping the state in split time zones.
And yet, your typical hoosier does long for the day he can drive from Gary to Indianapolis without having to reset his watch. The solution the Indiana legislature came up with, to the confusion of nearly everyone, is to keep the eastern part of the state on standard time, while advancing the western part of the state to daylight savings time. The keeps Gary in tune with Chicago, and as a side benefit, puts the entire state on the same time for 6 months of the year. However, those poor folks in Kentuckiana come out on the bad end of the deal. Still, given the circumstances, two out of three ain’t bad.
Here’s a handy link with a map showing which parts of the state associate with which time zone.
http://www.mccsc.edu/time.html
any state that does not observe daylight savings time does so out of good sense, in my opinion…
Down with Daylight Savings Time!!!
Nitpick time…
It’s Daylight **Saving ** Time, not Daylight Savings Time!
That one really winds me up.
Carry on…
I was mistaken. There are five counties in southeast Indiana that follow Cincinatti’s and Louisville’s lead, and switch to Eastern Daylight Time in the spring. But at least the western and central counties set their clocks the same.
This is the state that gives us Dan Quayle and Dan Burton. 'nuff said. 
It seems strange that Indiana would adhere to this b/c of farming, but other farm rich states like Iowa and Illinois would not.
The “close proximity to other major cities” thing doesn’t sound very unique either - I’m sure that problem exists for any two cities that are close to a time zone border.
Both make sense I guess. Still seems odd. Thanks for the replies…
Amen to that!
Daylight Saving Time has nothing to do with farming. Farmers work by the needs of the crop, not by an arbitrary time.
If the Commies took over one night and demanded that we all get up one hour earlier and go into work one hour earlier, there would be riots in the streets!
Daylight Saving Time. Obsolete, costly, annoying. Just say no.
All of Indiana should be in the Central time zone, if you look at a time zone map if the line between eastern and central time went straight north all of indiana would be in central time. http://geography.about.com/library/misc/ntimezones.htm
So essentially most of Indiana already has daylight savings time year round, the time is one hour ahead of where it should be. If the clocks where turned ahead another hou it would be light out until some ridiculously late hour.
That drove me frickin’ nuts as a kid - I lived in Southwestern Indiana, and if we wanted to drive to Indianapolis, we had to re-set our watches, then re-set them again once we got to Chicago, only to repeat the process on our way back. It made me crazy - I just never understood why the hell there were so many time zones in Indiana, and if they did have to divide the state into different times zones, why they couldn’t do it north-south, and not plop a different time zone in the middle of the state.
Indiana has a substantial dairy industry. The classic DST complaint here is, “There’s no set-time button on a cow.” Even though the number of dairy farms has declined quite a bit, DST is a third rail issue here. Indiana also has a brief legislature session; ninety days one year, and sixty the next. This year, one party (guess which) wasted a lot of time fighting to amend the constitution to ban same sex marriage. There was barely time to do a budget, and no time to deal with DST.
As for myself, I am in favor of civil unions between a Republican and another Republican, as long as one of them is sterile.
The extra hour of daylight would fade the curtains and confuse the cows 
At least, that’s the excuse used by the Queenslanders in Australia for not observing daylight savings like the rest of eastern Australia.
I believe that from April to October Indiana has three, not two time zones. Central Daylight Time in the Northwest, Eastern Daylight Time in the Southeast, and Eastern Standard Time in the rest of the state (admittedly, CDT and EST look the same on the clock, but it’s still 3 different time zones).
The TV schedule used to be really weird in Indianapolis. Prime time was 7 to 10 PM half the year, and then 8 to 11 PM the other half. Now they just use tape delay during the summer months so it’s 8 to 11PM all year.
Yes, Indiana actually has three timezones, although at any given time it looks like two.
The Northwestern counties follow Chicago in part because a significant portion of the population living there works in Chicago and Illinois (in fact, I’m one of those folks). Although the South Shore railroad resides primarially in Indiana, the passenger trail schedule also follows Chicago time, for much the same reasons. This is, of course, quite annoying to the folks in South Bend, who must take into account the time zone change when trying to catch the train to Chicago. It would be annoying to have to change time zones twice a day due to my job. I suspect similar situations prevail in the other time-changing counties.
The rest of the state is still largely rural. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of the farmers have a reasons to not change time as they don’t have a reason to do it. After all, farmer schedules are set by the needs of crops and livestock, not a clock. It’s not that they abandoned DST so much as never adopted it in the first place. It provides no benefit to them, while those living near a large urban center (Chicago, IL, St Louis, MO, Louisville, KY) do derieve some benefit from following the lead of the nearby big city.
Although, to contradict (slightly and only in one instance) Broomstick’s post, I knew a lady who lived in central Indiana who worked for someplace where she took a lot of calls from out of state. While she didn’t have to reset her clocks, she had to change her alarm clock and schedule twice a year. The call center maintained constant hours relative to the rest of the country. Thus the call center had reason to observe Daylight Saving Time.
How does St. Louis enter into this?
Good for Indiana for doing away with an antiquated and ridiculous concept. But more than one timezone? Are they stupid? Alaska did away with that concept many years ago, for the sake of simplicity and business.
DST is a stupid concept here. By March 15th, we are getting 12 hours of daylight. In the winter, we’re down to about five (and that’s here in Anchorage; it makes even less sense above the Arctic Circle), so getting up an hour earlier or later makes no difference at all.