Peru, IN
Peru was winter quarters for America's major circus companies from the 1880s to the 1940s; the International Circus Hall of Fame is in town and the place still calls itself Circus City. Harvey Hinklemeyers has been the local spot since 1979: pizza, pasta, the breadsticks everyone orders, and a huge breaded tenderloin on a homemade bun. Open daily from 11am.
Peru's own field is young by county standards: the city opened it in March 1971, a 4,400-foot grooved strip run by the local aviation board. The county's aviation weight sits south of town, where the Navy stood up a reserve air base named for Peru on the first of July, 1942; it grew into NAS Bunker Hill, became an Air Force B-58 base, and was renamed for Mitchell-born astronaut Gus Grissom after Apollo 1. Pilots at I76 still fly under Grissom Approach, and the base museum keeps 28 aircraft on the ramp down the road.
Originally Bunker Hill Naval Air Station (1942), then a Strategic Air Command base that stood nuclear alert through the Cold War before drawing down to a joint civil-military Air Reserve base in 1994. Renamed for astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom, the Indiana native born in Mitchell (southern Indiana, about 130 miles south of Peru). The outdoor aircraft display includes a B-47 Stratojet, B-58 Hustler, F-14 Tomcat, and A-10 Warthog — all visible from pattern altitude. The 12,500ft military runway occasionally hosts KC-135 tanker operations.
This forest-ringed reservoir was the site of the last battle fought in Indiana between Native Americans and U.S. military forces (1812). The annual Mississinewa 1812 reenactment every October is one of the largest War of 1812 reenactments in the country — sometimes visible from the air as encampments along the shore. The reservoir itself is beautiful from altitude, surrounded by hardwood forest with minimal development.
The only active circular paved airport in America. During WWII (the concrete mat went down in the fall of 1943), the U.S. Navy poured an 1,800-foot-wide octagonal landing surface here as a satellite field for NAS Bunker Hill. The design let pilots land in any wind direction — a concept that sounds logical but creates more problems than it solves (guaranteed crosswind on a curved surface). After the war, the Navy left and tiny Converse, Indiana inherited the strangest runway in the country. A single painted runway was added later, but the octagonal pad remains. It went viral in 2025 when a pilot found it on Google Maps and called it 'the weirdest airport in America.' Fly over it and the shape is unmistakable — a geometric anomaly in a sea of Indiana farmland. Land if you dare (1800ft!).
Fulton County is the round barn capital of the world — over 17 historic round barns survive in the county, the highest concentration anywhere. The Fulton County Museum has exhibits on round barn architecture, a unique American innovation from the late 1800s. Lake Manitou itself — a glacier-formed kettle lake — has a folk legend of a lake monster reported by the Potawatomi in the 1830s. The Round Barn Festival each June celebrates the heritage. From above, the round barns dot the farmland like coins.