Until 2006, Bartholomew had been one of the 76 counties (of the total 92 counties in Indiana) that had not been observing Daylight Saving Time (Residents in Arizona and Hawaii still do not change their clocks on the first Sunday of April and the last Sunday of October.) During the summer of 2006, Bartholomew County did observe Daylight Saving Time. As of 2007, Daylight Saving Time will begin at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and revert to standard time on the first Sunday in November.

The U.S. Department of Transportation officially oversees time zones in the United States and sets the starting and ending dates for observing daylight saving time. The US Uniform Time Act of 1966 placed Indiana in the Eastern time zone.

In 1969 ten counties in the Chicago and Evansville corners of the state aligned themselves with the Central time zone. These counties also observe Daylight Saving Time. During 1991, Starke County joined this group which includes Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, Gibson, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburgh, and Warrick counties. Dearborn and Ohio counties near Cincinnati plus Clark, Floyd, and Harrison counties near Louisville aligned themselves with Eastern Daylight Time from April through October each year.

The Indiana Legislature passed legislation in 2005 to mandate that beginning in 2006, Indiana will observe Daylight Saving Time. The legislation obligated the Governor of Indiana to request federal hearings on whether Indiana will remain in the Eastern time zone or switch to the Central time zone. Instead, each county was given the option to decide whether it would observe Eastern or Daylight time all year long. After this process was completed in 2005, several counties were denied their request, and the U.S. Department of Transportation placed counties in the two time zones
somewhat along geographic lines.

The counties that petitioned for Central Time were St. Joseph, Starke, Marshall, Pulaski, Fulton, White, Cass, Benton and Carroll in the northern part of the state; Fountain and Vermillion counties in the central part of the state; and Sullivan, Knox, Daviess, Martin, Lawrence, Pike, Dubois, and Perry counties in the southern part of the state. As of October 25, 2005, the US Department of Transportation tentatively proposed that only St. Joseph, Starke, Knox, Pike, and Perry Counties move from the Eastern to the Central time zone.

Early in 2006, legislation has been introduced to require that the 2006 general election ballot include a question asking voters whether all of Indiana (with the exception of Clark, Dearborn, Floyd, Harrison, and Ohio counties) should be placed in the Central Time Zone. This bill and similar requests for a referendum have not passed at this point.

Effective April 2, 2006 eight counties - Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, Perry, Pike, Pulaski and Starke - moved from the Eastern to Central Time Zone.

From April through October 2006, Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, Gibson, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburgh, and Warrick counties also chose not to observe Daylight Saving Time.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has the authority to split the state of Indiana into specific Central and Eastern time zones as has been done in other states. Idaho and Oregon are split between the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are divided between Central and Mountain time zones. Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee are split between Eastern and Central time zones.

We all understand this now, right?

(By the way, the code that creates the clock that follows your mouse pointer around this page
(if you're using Internet Explorer) gets its time from the time setting on YOUR computer.
It's a trick. The clock program has no idea what time it is in Bartholomew County either.
Change the time or date on your computer, and the spinning clock will change as well.)