Indiana State Motto: The Crossroads of America

Indiana's state motto is The Crossroads of America. The Indiana General Assembly adopted it in 1937, making it the official motto of the 19th state. The phrase gives Indiana a geographic identity built around transportation rather than landscape or history.

The claim is grounded in Indiana's actual road geography. More major U.S. highways converge in Indiana than in almost any other state. Indianapolis sits near the intersection of several interstate highways, and Indiana has sat at the crossing of the country's main east-west and north-south land routes since long before the interstate era.

Indiana became the 19th state on December 11, 1816. For more than a century, it had no official state motto. The phrase "Crossroads of America" was in use as a promotional description of Indiana's road geography before the General Assembly gave it official standing.

In 1937, the Indiana General Assembly adopted "The Crossroads of America" as the official state motto. The timing connected the motto to the highway era: U.S. routes through Indiana had been numbered and federally designated since 1926, and the state was already well known among motorists as a through-state connecting the East Coast to the Midwest.

The phrase remained the official motto through the interstate highway era and into the present. No earlier official state motto was replaced in 1937 — Indiana had not previously designated one.