Angola, IN
Lake James carries one of Indiana's rare public water runways: 2,500 feet of designated seaplane lane on the lake at Pokagon State Park, FAA identifier 01E. The Indiana DNR owns the base, and the Indiana Seaplane Pilots Association's push made it a public facility in 2012; before that, every splash required private permission. The association's annual September splash-in, now in its third decade, fills the lake with floats each fall. Seaplane operations run sunrise to sunset only, and summer weekends mean heavy boat traffic.
A jewel of Indiana's state park system on the shore of Lake James. The legendary refrigerated toboggan track — a quarter-mile of banked, twisting ice — runs Thanksgiving through February and is one of the most unique winter attractions in the Midwest. Speeds hit 35-40 mph. The Potawatomi Inn (1927) overlooks the lake — a great fly-in stay. Steuben County's 101 lakes form a glittering blue maze from above; this is some of the best summer flying in Indiana. The park is named after Chief Simon Pokagon, the last hereditary chief of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.
One of the world's great automotive museums, housed in the original 1929 Auburn Automobile Company headquarters — a stunning Art Deco landmark, itself a National Historic Landmark. Over 130 vehicles spanning the Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg legacy: cars so beautiful and powerful they were the choice of Hollywood (Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Mae West) and royalty in the 1930s. The Cord 810 is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful cars ever made. Every Labor Day weekend, the Auburn Auction draws 100,000+ collector car enthusiasts to town. The museum sits less than a mile from KGWB — easy crew car distance.
The third-largest Amish settlement in the US. From 1500ft, the landscape transforms into a patchwork of small, immaculately maintained farms with no power lines. Horse-drawn buggies on country roads are visible on clear days. The contrast between Amish farmland and surrounding modern agriculture is striking from above — smaller fields, more diverse crops, and farmsteads clustered closer together. Tuesday and Wednesday are auction days in Shipshewana when the town fills with buggies.
One of America's rarest surviving early-20th-century airport hangars. Built in 1930 with massive Truscon Steel Company doors — the only example of their kind in the country at the time. During WWII, the hangar produced TDR-1 Assault Drones, an early version of the cruise missile. Famous visitors over the decades included Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Doolittle, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Wiley Post. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The future home of the National Airmail Museum, which signed an MOU in 2024 to lease and restore the hangar — they need to raise $5M+ to complete the project. Tour the field by ground after landing — the Carousel Hangar is the only example of Clark W. Smith's patented rotating-door design ever built.