Flora, IN
Flora's field is small-town flying at its most basic and best: a 2,100-foot turf runway two miles southwest of town, city-owned since 1967, home to a handful of airplanes and ultralights. There is no FBO and nothing to buy; you come for the grass.
Site of the November 7, 1811 battle where William Henry Harrison's forces defeated Tecumseh's Confederation, marking a pivotal moment in westward expansion and giving Harrison the campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" that won him the presidency. The 96-acre national historic site preserves the battlefield largely as it was — visible from above as preserved prairie surrounded by Indiana farmland. The Battle Ground Museum tells the complex story of the conflict between the Shawnee, Lenape, and Potawatomi peoples and the United States.
On the shores of Lake Shafer since 1926 — "There's more than corn in Indiana." A nostalgic Midwestern boardwalk amusement park with classic wooden coasters, rides, and a beach. Briefly closed in 2020, reopened by new owners and operating since. The narrow, twisting Tippecanoe River reservoirs (Lake Shafer and Lake Freeman) create some of the best low-altitude scenic flying in northwestern Indiana — like flying along silver ribbons through farmland.
The Wabash River — celebrated in Indiana's state song "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" — winds 503 miles across the state, defining Indiana's landscape and history. The river forms much of the Indiana-Illinois border. Best aerial views: the great bend at Lafayette/West Lafayette where the river curves around Purdue, the high cliffs near Logansport, and the wide farmland stretches around Terre Haute. Fall color along the corridor in mid-October is exceptional.
You are landing at the oldest university-owned airport in the United States. Purdue University Airport opened in 1930, when aviation was barely older than the students flying out of it, and the university has been turning out pilots and aeronautical engineers ever since. Purdue calls itself the "Cradle of Astronauts," and the claim holds: 27 Purdue graduates have been selected as astronauts — including the first human to walk on the Moon and the last. Neil Armstrong earned his aeronautical engineering degree at Purdue in 1955. Gus Grissom — the Hoosier from Mitchell, Indiana, whose Gemini capsule sits down at Spring Mill State Park — graduated in 1950 and became one of the original Mercury Seven. Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, was Purdue ''56. Roger Chaffee, who died with Grissom in the Apollo 1 fire, was Purdue ''57. The first boot down on the Moon and the last boot up both belong to Purdue. The aviation roots run deeper still. Amelia Earhart joined Purdue in 1935 as a visiting faculty member and a career counselor for women students. The university, through the Purdue Research Foundation, funded the Lockheed Electra 10E — her "Flying Laboratory" — in which she disappeared over the Pacific in July 1937. Her papers are held in Purdue''s library. The Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering (2007) anchors the engineering campus, with a statue of Armstrong as a young student seated on the steps out front. Purdue runs one of the busiest collegiate professional-flight programs in the country, so you will share the pattern with student pilots in trainers.