Orleans Airport

You are landing at Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport. Seven miles south, inside Spring Mill State Park, the Gus Grissom Memorial holds "Molly Brown" — the Gemini 3 spacecraft Grissom flew in March 1965 on the first crewed Gemini mission. The airport carries his name; the park holds his spacecraft; he grew up twelve miles away in Mitchell, Indiana. Few general-aviation fields in the country bind their name, their region, and a national hero together this tightly. Virgil "Gus" Grissom was the second American in space (Mercury-Redstone 4, July 1961 — the "Liberty Bell 7" suborbital flight whose hatch blew open prematurely on splashdown and sank the capsule), the first American to fly in space twice (Gemini 3), and the commander of Apollo 1. He died with Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the January 27, 1967 cabin fire during a launch-pad test. He was 40. The memorial at Spring Mill tells his story through the Molly Brown capsule, his spacesuit, and personal artifacts. Spring Mill State Park is one of Indiana''s oldest and finest. Its centerpiece is Pioneer Village — a restored early-1800s limestone milling settlement built around a three-story gristmill still turned by water carried on a long wooden flume from a cave spring. The mill grinds corn for visitors. The surrounding karst holds Twin Caves (boat tours run into the cave on an underground stream), Donaldson Cave, and Bronson Cave, all cut into the Mitchell Plateau limestone that built southern Indiana — the same Salem limestone quarried up around Bedford. Donaldson Woods is a 67-acre old-growth forest that was never logged.

When it was completed in 1902, this 200-foot free-span dome was the largest in the world — bigger than the Pantheon in Rome, bigger than St. Peter's Basilica. It held the record until the Houston Astrodome in 1965. Called the 'Eighth Wonder of the World,' the hotel fell into disrepair but was restored in 2007. The circular dome is clearly visible from 3000ft. The dome is most photogenic from the south, with the valley's forested hills as backdrop.

The Salem and St. Genevieve limestone quarried around Bedford built the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the National Cathedral, the Lincoln Memorial, and 35 of the 50 state capitols. From the air, the massive open-pit quarries are a dramatic landscape — turquoise rectangles cut deep into the earth. The Indiana Limestone Heritage Festival each June celebrates the industry and stonecarving tradition. Just south, the town of Mitchell preserves Gus Grissom's boyhood home — the Mercury 7 astronaut, second American in space, who died in the Apollo 1 fire. The Gus Grissom Memorial includes his Gemini 3 capsule "Molly Brown."

The limestone quarried around Bedford and Bloomington built a startling share of monumental America — the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the National Cathedral, and some 35 state capitols. The Empire Quarry is the most famous: the pit that yielded 18,630 tons of stone for the Empire State Building. The belt between the two towns is pocked with these workings, active and abandoned, their sheer pale walls dropping to floors of still blue water.