North Vernon, IN
Originally established 1947, North Vernon Airport serves Jennings County in southeastern Indiana. The town was named after Samuel Vernon, a Connecticut Revolutionary War officer. The Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge — over 7,800 acres of protected wetlands — is just east, providing excellent scenic flying with sandhill cranes during winter migration.
In April 1945, 101 Black officers of the 477th Bombardment Group (the Tuskegee Airmen) were arrested at Freeman Army Airfield in Seymour, IN for attempting to enter the whites-only Officers Club. Three were court-martialed. The 'Freeman Field Mutiny' became a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement and directly influenced President Truman's 1948 executive order desegregating the U.S. military. Before the mutiny, Freeman trained 4,245 multi-engine bomber pilots — 23 died in training. After, it became the Foreign Aircraft Evaluation Center where captured German jets, V-1 buzz bombs, and V-2 rockets were tested on American soil. WWII buildings still stand. The Freeman Army Airfield Museum preserves one of the most important — and least known — civil rights stories in American history.
Columbus, Indiana — population about 50,000 — ranks sixth on the American Institute of Architects'' list of US cities for architectural innovation and design, behind only Chicago, New York, Washington, Boston, and San Francisco. How a small diesel-engine manufacturing town in southern Indiana came to hold more than 90 significant modernist buildings, six of them National Historic Landmarks, is a story about one man and one idea. J. Irwin Miller ran Cummins, the engine maker headquartered in Columbus. In 1954 he created a foundation program with an unusual offer: if the local school board or another public body hired an architect from a foundation-curated list of the best designers in the world, the Cummins Foundation would pay the design fee. The town said yes, again and again, for fifty years. Columbus filled with work by Eero Saarinen, Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, Richard Meier, Harry Weese, Cesar Pelli, and Kevin Roche. The landmarks: First Christian Church (Eliel Saarinen, 1942) was one of the first contemporary churches in America. North Christian Church (Eero Saarinen, 1964, his final work) is a hexagonal building with a 192-foot spire rising from a single central oculus. The Miller House (Eero Saarinen, 1957) — Miller''s own residence, with interiors by Alexander Girard and landscape by Dan Kiley — is one of the most important modernist houses in the country, now owned by Newfields and open for tours. The Irwin Conference Center (formerly Irwin Union Bank, Eero Saarinen, 1954) floated a glass-walled bank on slender columns downtown. Add the Bartholomew County Library (I.M. Pei, 1969) with Henry Moore''s "Large Arch" bronze out front, and dozens more.
A deep canyon system with waterfalls just above the Ohio River at Madison, IN. Madison itself is one of the best-preserved 19th-century river towns in the Midwest — the entire downtown is a National Historic Landmark district. From the air, the contrast between the canyon's forested gorge and the river town below is dramatic. The Madison Regatta (hydroplane racing on the Ohio) every July is visible and audible from altitude.
133 blocks of preserved 19th-century architecture make Madison a National Historic Landmark District — more than any other small town in America. The town sits in a deep Ohio River valley with limestone bluffs rising on both sides, creating one of the most spectacular river approaches in the Midwest. The Lanier Mansion (1844) is a Greek Revival masterpiece, and downtown is packed with antique shops, river-view restaurants, and Federal-style homes. The Madison Regatta hydroplane races on the Ohio happen each July — viewable from above. Clifty Falls State Park is right at the field with a 60-foot waterfall in a sandstone canyon.