Indiana's Quiet Bet on Ports: Geography Decides and Movement Follows

Here's a question for you: what percentage of Indiana is bordered by water? That is, how much of the state's geographic outline is on water? 

While you think about it, I'll tell you my guess: 13%. Do you have yours?

Well, here's the answer. It's over 55%. Shocking? I was shocked, and I've lived here my entire life. When I first heard this stat, I thought there's no way, so I opened Google Maps to have a closer look. Upon immediate glance, it's all green, barring the obvious connection to Lake Michigan in the northwest corner of the state (hence my 13% guess). But I forgot to consider, from my junior soccer road trips down to the Bluegrass State, that the entire border with Kentucky is on the Ohio River. Add in the Wabash River with Illinois, and the figure rises to over 50%.

‍

Crossroads of America, But Not by Boat

So what does this mean beyond a geographic fun fact? Well, Indiana is synonymous with logistics. Our motto is "The Crossroads of America," set up as the natural convergence between north-south and east-west travel. Planes, trains, and automobiles… are all constantly passing through Indiana. But what about boats?

Boats in Indiana typically sail no further than our collection of man-made lakes and our small hidden-gem lake towns. Unlike our neighbors up north, we're certainly not a boating state. Or at least, we haven't been. In the same pitches from state leadership where I learned about the shocking amount of Indiana's waterway border, I also started hearing about a quiet but deliberate push to actually use that water. To manufacture ships, to move cargo, and to turn that coastline into something more than a line on a map.

The key player in that push is Ports of Indiana. They operate three ports, two on the Ohio River and one on Lake Michigan, which together unlock access to the Atlantic, the Gulf, and put two-thirds of the country within a day's drive. They already generate $8.7 billion in annual economic activity for the state, which is not a small number for an industry most Hoosiers don't think about.

‍

The Ireland Connection

Admittedly, when I first heard all this, I also did the thing where you trace the blue on the map all the way through to see what's all connected by water. And yes, that blue goes all the way up from the bottom of Lake Michigan where it touches Indiana, all the way through the Great Lakes, up through Canada, then bam, out in the Atlantic. So it is possible. In fact, earlier this year, Indiana opened up a trade office in Ireland so we can directly ship to and from the Port of Cork. To put a number on why that matters, Ireland made $32.4 billion in shipments to Indiana in 2024, more than triple that shipped by any other country. The catch is that most of those goods never actually moved through an Indiana port. They came in through the coasts and got trucked or railed the rest of the way. Indiana was the destination, but not the doorway.

That's the piece that's changing. Ports of Indiana is opening its first container terminal at Burns Harbor on Lake Michigan and has signed partnership agreements with the Port of Cork and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, the 13th largest port in the world. Trial container shipments start this year. The container piece is the missing layer, and now the math on where goods enter the country changes.

‍

Manufacturing Is a Big Part of the Story

The port piece doesn't sit in isolation. Manufacturing has always been Indiana's identity, but the kind of manufacturing happening here is changing. We're moving from the legacy version of "Indiana makes things" toward a version where the things being made are some of the most strategically important products in the global economy, from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals to EV batteries to jet engines. The investments landing in West Lafayette, Lebanon, Kokomo, and Indianapolis over the past few years have turned the state into one of the country's most important advanced manufacturing hubs.

All of these industries are global by nature, with supply chains and customers that span continents. The manufacturing buildout gives the port something to move, and the port gives the manufacturing buildout a faster, cheaper way to move it. The immediate impact may be modest, but the more interesting part is the foundation being laid, since ports take time to mature and the version that matters is the one five or ten years from now. The pieces that need to be built around it aren't fully optimized today, but they're the kinds of problems that get solved once the underlying capability exists to even attempt them. That's what makes this more than just an infrastructure story.

‍

Even Flyover Has Its Benefits

The ports and the manufacturing buildout aren't happening in a vacuum. Indiana is already one of the most connected states in the country, even if it doesn't always get credit for it. Being a flyover state gets framed as a knock, mostly by people who fly over us. But the numbers tell a different story. According to INDOT, Indiana is home to more pass-through highways than any state in the country, ranks fifth in commercial freight traffic, fourth in number of railroads, and is within a day's drive of more than half the populations of the U.S. and Canada. On top of that, Indianapolis International Airport is home to the second-largest FedEx hub in the world. Every year, hundreds of millions of tons of freight move through the state, and roughly a third of all that traffic is just passing through. The country has to move stuff, and a remarkable amount of it has to move through here.

That's not an accident. The state's identity is built around being good at being in the middle, which means we don't try to convince the country to come to us so much as we make it easier for the country to get to where it's going, and we get paid along the way. It takes a special kind of culture to embrace being the "Crossroads of America," and I'll let you interpret "special" how you may. Building a community identity around being the place people drive through and fly over is a little crazy when you think about it, but I guess that's just how we Hoosiers are. More pathways in means more things moving through, and more things moving through means more economic upside for the people who live here.
‍

‍
In a time where digital tools are moving faster than ever ... there will always be a logistical component to everything: How stuff is made, and how that stuff is moved.

‍

The ports are the newest version of this. They're not asking Indiana to be something we're not, they're giving us another lane to do what we've always done, with one important new feature: the ability for goods to stop here instead of just passing through. That's the part that compounds, because the more convergence happens here, the more reason there is for the next manufacturer, warehouse, or logistics company to plant a flag in the state, and Indiana is adding water to the list of ways things can move.

‍

Where the Opportunity Lives

Innovation, in the public imagination, has come to mean technology. I think this whole story is a good reminder that it's much more than that, and that Indiana is a strong representation of why. In a time where digital tools are moving faster than ever, which is both promising and absolutely terrifying, there will always be a logistical component to everything. How stuff is made, and how that stuff is moved. Simple on paper, but innovative nonetheless.That's where Indiana, and the Midwest as a whole, tend to thrive. The geography was the card Indiana was dealt, but Hoosiers have spent generations figuring out the movement part. Back in 1836, the state actually tried to build a 296-mile canal that would connect the Wabash and Erie Canal to the Ohio River. Almost two centuries before Burns Harbor, Indiana was already trying to move things by water. The timing was unfortunate and the whole thing went bust, but the instinct behind it, finding new ways to move things, has shaped the state ever since.

The thing about a system this big getting built out is that the opportunity isn't concentrated at the top. There will of course be major players involved, but underneath them is room for everyone in the economic ecosystem, from the founder building a single specialized piece of the logistics puzzle to the existing manufacturer who finally has a reason to add international sales to their plan to the operator running one warehouse or one customs brokerage or one freight tech tool. The system needs all of them, and that's what makes this moment ripe for opportunity. The bar for participating isn't being a Fortune 500 company, it's paying attention.

Manufacturing and logistics are boring in the way that important things often are, and Indiana is leaning into both the boring and the important parts, which feels like a pretty good place to be.

‍