Indianapolis - geography.

« Amateur athletic competitions are frequent in Indianapolis.

Each summer it is the site for the finals of the Hoosier State Games, with athletes of all ages and skill levelscompeting in 21 sports.

In 1987 Indianapolis hosted the Tenth Pan American Games, and is often the site for numerous Olympic trials and collegiate sportschampionships.

Among the many sports facilities are those for tennis, bicycle racing, skating, and track and field. The city’s professional football team, the Indianapolis Colts, plays in the 60,300-seat RCA Dome (once known as the Hoosier Dome).

The Indiana Pacers and the IndianaFever, men’s and women’s professional basketball teams, play in the Conseco Fieldhouse, which opened in 1999.

By far the biggest professional show in the city is theannual Indianapolis 500, officially the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, a Memorial Day weekend automobile race that is the world’s largest single-day sporting event.

TheBrickyard 400, a stock-car race, was established at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1994. VI ECONOMY Indianapolis has a well-balanced economy and since the 1970s has experienced steady, sometimes impressive, economic growth.

Major manufactures includeautomobile parts, electrical components, pharmaceuticals, machinery, transportation equipment, metal products, processed food, paper products, printed materials, andrubber and plastic goods.

Government activity, financial and insurance institutions, construction, sports, tourism, and the convention trade are also importantcontributors to the city’s economy.

The city houses few headquarters of major corporations; the best known is Eli Lilly and Company, a major pharmaceuticalmanufacturer. The largest employer in Indianapolis is government—local, state, and federal—followed by retailing, manufacturing, and health care.

More than 60 percent ofIndianapolis workers are in professional, management, technical, sales, and clerical occupations, while fewer than 20 percent are blue-collar workers.

The GreaterIndianapolis Progress Committee (formed in 1965), a nonprofit civic improvement association, and the Indianapolis Economic Development Corporation (formed in 1983)have been important in developing the Indianapolis economy, which before the 1970s relied heavily on manufacturing. Without access to a navigable river, transportation has always been important to Indianapolis.

Today more interstate freeways (I-65, I-69, I-70, and I-74) and federalhighways (routes 31, 36, 40, and 52) cross in Indianapolis than any other major American city.

The Indianapolis International Airport serves the city.

Rail connectionsare excellent, with a major Amtrak repair facility in the county. VII GOVERNMENT Indianapolis and Marion County consolidated city and county governments in 1970 to reduce duplication of services that wasted public funds.

Known as Unigov, the plangreatly increased the size and population of the city as areas once under county jurisdiction joined with Indianapolis. The combined government is divided into three branches: executive, legislative and judicial.

An elected mayor heads the executive branch.

The mayor appoints thedirectors of five executive departments, who oversee the city’s infrastructure, development, public works, public safety, and parks.

The legislative branch consists of a29-member city-county council that confirms appointments by the mayor, adopts budgets, and enacts local laws.

Each member is elected to a four-year term; 25members are selected by their districts and 4 members are chosen citywide. The county is also divided into nine townships that have elected officials such as assessors and trustees.

Both the townships and the city operate public school systems.In addition, the cities of Lawrence, Beech Grove, and Southport and the town of Speedway opted at the time of consolidation to retain local control.

Each still elects amayor and council.

But because the communities are also part of Marion County, residents have the right to vote in Indianapolis elections as well. VIII HISTORY The Miami and Delaware cultures were dominant in central Indiana when the first white settlers arrived in what would become Indianapolis.

Both Native Americanpeoples soon left the area, and few traces remain of their heritage in the Indianapolis region. In 1820 a committee from the state legislature, searching for a site for a new state capital to replace Corydon near the state’s southern extreme, selected a locationalong the White River because of its central location.

The legislature approved the selection in 1821, named the capital Indianapolis, and chose Alexander Ralston to layout the town.

Ralston had been assistant to Pierre L’Enfant while he designed Washington, D.C., and he modeled his plan for Indianapolis after the plan for the nation’scapital created by L’Enfant. The state capital moved to Indianapolis from Corydon in 1825 but experienced slow growth because of a lack of good transportation.

The White River was too shallow tosustain navigation.

Increased population, including immigrant Germans and Irish, arrived following construction of the National Road in the 1830s and railroads after1847.

Rapid growth, however, began only with the American Civil War (1861-1865) when the Union Army chose centrally located Indianapolis as a training and stagingground for troops.

The city also became a major supply depot. Aided by a superior transportation system, industrialization became the driving force in the city’s economic development after the Civil War.

Discovery of short-livednatural gas fields in central Indiana in the 1890s spurred economic growth.

By World War I (1914-1918), Indianapolis ranked in the nation’s top 20 cities in bothpopulation and the value of its manufactured products.

Its diversified economy ranged from agricultural processing to metalworking to meatpacking and carriage (laterautomobile) manufacturing. Economic growth brought increased attention to Indianapolis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Local attorney Benjamin Harrison captured the presidency in1888, four Indianapolis residents won a major party’s nomination for vice president—two were elected, Thomas Hendricks (1884) and Charles W.

Fairbanks (1904)—andthe Socialist Party of America was formed and held its first convention in the city in 1906.

National literary figures James Whitcomb Riley, Meredith Nicholson, andnovelist Booth Tarkington (twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize) claimed Indianapolis as home, as did one of the nation’s largest publishers, Bobbs-Merrill.

Black migrantsfrom the South arrived in large number in the early 1900s, establishing the city as a center for jazz and blues music.

So many labor unions established headquarters inthe city—including the United Mine Workers of America and the Teamsters Union—that Indianapolis for decades was recognized as the nation’s labor capital. During the first half of the 20th century, Indianapolis was a center for automobile manufacturing and the auto-parts industry.

Numerous local shops produced cars stillprized for their classic character, including Stutz, Marmon, National, and Cole.

This activity spurred the creation of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to test new cars andled later to the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, now the world’s largest single-day sporting event.

While automobile manufacturing ultimately disappeared from the city(some parts manufacturing remains), other industries flourished, especially during World War II (1939-1945) when Indianapolis was called “Toolmaker to the Nation.” Although Indianapolis exhibited prosperity and stability during the early to mid 20th century—95 percent of its dwellings in 1930 were single-family residences, highestamong the nation’s largest cities—there was a darker side to these decades.

Few places experienced stronger antiforeign sentiment or a more active Ku Klux Klan.

Intothe 1960s Indianapolis had a reputation as one of the most segregated northern cities. Following a decline in its economic base and the flight of more affluent residents to the suburbs, Indianapolis and Marion County created Unigov, one of the nation’s. »