The Hoosier Lottery arrives

ROW 82-2 · DUG · 1988 – APRIL 1990, WITH ONE NAMED SUB-GAP

The state game arrived on a dated morning, at a scale the record fixes: Indiana voters approved a constitutional amendment lifting the state's lottery ban in 1988, by about 62 percent; the General Assembly authorized the Hoosier Lottery in May 1989, in the same act-season as pari-mutuel horse racing; and the first ticket — a $1 scratch-off of the first game, Hoosier Millionaire — went on sale on October 13, 1989, at some 6,600 retail outlets statewide, the Associated Press report of that Friday putting projected first-day sales as high as five million tickets. The first draw game, Lotto Cash, followed in April 1990. The Lottery's own 35th-anniversary record (October 11, 2024) fixes the same date and the course since: more than $18 billion in prizes paid since 1989. The Lottery keeps a regional office in Mishawaka, which is the office this ground's claims above retailer level have always run through — the Mishawaka prize-payment office is named in the Lottery's own claim instructions today.

Granger's place in that arrival is documented at exactly one strength, and no stronger. The 6,600 outlets of October 1989 were the state's groceries, gas stations and convenience stores; the retailers that serve this ground today — the Martin's supermarkets, the corridor convenience stores along State Road 23 — are the same retail class, and the Lottery's retailer network is the only form the state game has ever taken on unincorporated ground: no lottery office, terminal plant, or drawing has ever been seated in the CDP, and none was ever proposed. The first ticket actually sold in Granger — the store, the day, the buyer — is not in any record this run could reach: the Lottery's published history is a state history, and the local first-sale story, if one was ever written, stands in the Tribune's October 1989 file. NAMED SUB-GAP: the first Granger sale; settler: the South Bend Tribune, October 13–20, 1989, and the Hoosier Lottery's 1989 retailer list for St. Joseph County.

Sources:

1. Hoosier Lottery, "35 Years of Championing Hoosier Dreams" (October 11, 2024) — first ticket sale October 13, 1989; 1988 referendum; prizes since 1989.
2. Associated Press, October 13, 1989 (carried in The Observer, Notre Dame) — Hoosier Millionaire on sale at 6,600 outlets; the 1851 constitutional ban lifted by the 1988 amendment.
3. Hoosier Lottery history summaries (LotteryUSA; the Lottery's published record) — authorization May 1989; first draw game April 1990; Mishawaka regional office.
4. Hoosier Lottery, "Claiming Your Prize" (read November 2026) — the Mishawaka prize-payment office as this ground's claim point for prizes of $600–$49,999.