The other 82 counties were in the Eastern Time Zone and did not observe DST however, six counties near Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, unofficially observed DST.

įrom 1967 to 1977, six counties in the northwest near Chicago and six southwest counties in and around Evansville, observed DST in the Central Time Zone. Once again, the law was not enforceable, and individual communities continued to observe whichever time zone they preferred. Handley vowed to enforce the law by withdrawing state aid from communities who attempted to observe 'fast time' during the winter, though legal obstacles forced the Governor to back down from his stance. The law did, however, make it illegal for communities to observe 'fast time' (i.e., daylight saving time) during the winter months. The Indiana General Assembly passed a law to make Central Time the official time zone of the state in 1957, but permitted any community to switch to daylight saving time during the summer. However, the law had no enforcement power, and it was largely ignored by communities who wanted to observe Eastern Standard Time. city debate, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law to put all of Indiana on Central Standard Time and to outlaw daylight saving time. After the war, the mandate to observe daylight saving time was lifted again. During World War II, daylight saving time was once again mandated by Congress to conserve energy. A year later, Congress repealed daylight saving time from the Standard Time Act of 1918, though some communities continued to follow it. Daylight saving time (DST) was included in the original Standard Time Act. The Ohio-Indiana state line became the time zone line in 1927 (north of US Route 40) and 1935 (from US Route 40 to the Ohio River). It was at this time the dividing line between Eastern Time and Central Time was moved from the Pennsylvania-Ohio and West Virginia-Ohio state lines. All of Indiana was located in the Central Time Zone. Time zones were first adopted by the United States Congress with the Standard Time Act of 1918. However, some communities chose to observe Eastern Time. The Standard Time Act of 1918 placed Indiana in the Central Time Zone. Census Bureau), closer to the center of the Central Time Zone at the 90th meridian than the center of the Eastern Time Zone at the 75th meridian.ġ918–61. The state capital in Indianapolis lies at approximately the 86th meridian (U.S. On November 18, 1883, telegraph lines transmitted GMT to major cities, where each city was to adjust their official time to their proper zone. By 1883, the major railroads in the US agreed to coordinate their clocks and begin operating on 'standard time' with four 'time zones' established across the (then 38-state) nation, centered on the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 120th meridians west.

With the emergence of the railroads, hundreds of miles could be traveled in a much shorter time, causing a train passenger to apparently experience several slight changes in time over the course of even a short rail trip. In Indiana, local mean time varied from GMT-5:39 in the east to GMT-5:52 in the west. Since the sun reaches 'high noon' four minutes later for every degree of longitude traveled towards the west, the time in every town was different. The diagrams in this article are colored to show these 11 zones and a key is provided below.īefore 1883 in the United States, most towns and cities set their own local time to noon when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. The tz database lists 11 time zones for Indiana, where each zone is defined as a geographic area that observed the same offsets from UTC since Janu(the UNIX epoch). Shanks, where the author identifies 345 areas in the state with a different time zone history for each.

The most extensive study of time zone history in Indiana has been published in The American Atlas (1978) by Thomas G. Since April 2, 2006, all counties in Indiana observe daylight saving time.

Southwestern Indiana ( Evansville Metro Area):.

Northwestern Indiana ( Chicago- Gary metropolitan area):.

Six of these counties are in northwestern Indiana, near Chicago (which observes Central Time), and six are in southwestern Indiana, near Evansville, where the metro area includes portions of southeastern Illinois and western Kentucky, which also observe Central Time. Indiana observes Eastern Time, except for 12 of its 92 counties, which observe Central Time. Time in Indiana: Counties grouped by time zone.

Ohio utc time zone