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Fort Wayne's snowmobile record is mostly a record of an absence, and this section sets it out. Allen County has exactly one designated public snowmobile trail in every current official listing, the Heritage Trail through the farm country between Maples and Hoagland, and it does not enter Fort Wayne. Around that finding the section assembles what does exist: the Hoagland Blizzard Blazers, the club founded in 1979 out of the Blizzard of 1978 that built the trail; the state system behind it, funded by riders' registration fees and worked by volunteer clubs on leased farmland; and the fuller trail country of the northern tier, where Steuben County's Potawatomi Trail shows what a snowmobile county looks like. The Blizzard of 1978, the one week the snowmobile was king in Fort Wayne itself, closes the section.
The Allen County finding: one trail, and it is not in Fort Wayne
1980 — present
The finding: Allen County has exactly one designated public snowmobile trail in every current official listing, and it does not enter Fort Wayne. The Heritage Snowmobile Trail — 32 miles by its own club's count, 34 by the state's…
The machine arrives, and the state organizes it
1970s
The thin early record: Indiana's surviving paper trail for snowmobiling thickens in the 1970s, and this section will not pretend otherwise: the searches behind it found no Indiana source that dates the first machines' arrival in…
The state system: registration fees, leased farmland, volunteer clubs
1976 — present
How it is paid for: Indiana's snowmobile trails run on the riders' own money. The DNR's program manual states that the trails program "is mostly funded by snowmobile registration fees paid by Indiana's snowmobile owners," and the…
The Heritage Trail and the Blizzard Blazers of Hoagland
1979 — present
The club: Allen County's snowmobile institution was born from the blizzard, and says so in its name. The Hoagland Blizzard Blazers Snowmobile Club tells its own history in two sentences on its website: "We were established in…
The system around Fort Wayne: the northern-tier trails
1980s — present
Steuben County, the Potawatomi Trail: Forty-five minutes north of Fort Wayne, in the lake country of Steuben County, runs the one Indiana trail the state does not touch. The Potawatomi Snowmobile Trail — 32 miles north of Angola…
The Blizzard of 1978: the snowmobile's week
25 — 27 January 1978
The storm: The blizzard itself is told at full length in this record's Major Events, and only the snowmobile's part is told here. What arrived on Wednesday 25 January 1978 was the storm Indiana still measures winters against: the…
The modern position: fewer sleds, shorter odds on snow
2005 — present
The numbers: Indiana's registered snowmobile fleet has been shrinking for two decades, on the state's own figures. The state reported 12,844 registered snowmobiles to the Federal Highway Administration for its 2006 trail-funding…
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