Annual MELUS Conference

In the early twentieth century, Indianapolis acquired the nickname, “the crossroads of America”: it is the city where the busiest highways in the United States merge and then diverge east and west, north and south. Congruently, the city’s earliest growth and development was also a result of transportation: in the nineteenth century, trains that crossed the country refueled and replenished in a city that came to offer sustenance and entertainment to millions of travelers. The city’s early prominence in the automobile industry, represented by an internationally famous racing event, further established its link to the ideology of transport and movement.