Seymour, IN
Located at 820 A Avenue East right on the historic Freeman Field; walking distance from the ramp, down the industrial road past the warehouses, and worth the hunt. Seth and Tonya Pacey named the place for their daughter Lola and grew it from a 10-by-10 tent at Seymour's 2022 fall festival, through a food truck, into this restaurant in early 2024. The menu is seasonal and creative with southern Indiana farm ingredients; the fried tenderloin comes crispy and light with corn salsa, nothing like the standard version, and vegetarian and gluten-free options are a point of pride. Closed Mondays, and Sunday ends at 3 pm, so weekend dinner means Saturday. Pair lunch with a visit to the Freeman Army Airfield Museum on the field.
One of the most historically significant airports in Indiana. As Freeman Army Airfield during WWII, it trained multi-engine bomber pilots — 4,245 cadets graduated from the program, 23 were killed in training. In 1945, the 477th Bombardment Group — the Tuskegee Airmen — was transferred here. The 'Freeman Field Mutiny' occurred when 101 Black officers attempted to enter the whites-only Officers Club, directly challenging military segregation. Three were court-martialed. The incident became a catalyst for President Truman's 1948 order to desegregate the armed forces. After the mutiny, Freeman became the Foreign Aircraft Evaluation Center, where 160 captured Axis aircraft — including German jets, V-1 buzz bombs, and V-2 rockets — were tested. A pilot was killed evaluating a captured Focke-Wulf 190. The Freeman Army Airfield Museum preserves this extraordinary history. WWII-era buildings still stand on the field.
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.
Called 'The Little Smokies' for the blue haze that fills the hollows, Brown County has Indiana's most dramatic topography — rugged, deeply forested hills that look nothing like the flat farmland 30 miles north. Peak fall color is typically the third week of October, when the entire 16,000-acre park turns into a patchwork of red, orange, and gold. Nashville, IN (the town, not Tennessee) is a charming artist colony below. The terrain change is dramatic at the boundary of the Knobstone hills.
Indiana's only national forest — 200,000 acres of hardwood hills covering southern Indiana. Hemlock Cliffs, Wesley Chapel Gulf, the Knobstone Trail (Indiana's longest), and the iconic French Lick / West Baden region all sit within or near the forest. The hills are a glacial-era surprise in flat Indiana — the Wisconsin glacier stopped just north of here, leaving the south side rugged and forested. Spectacular fall color October 15-30, peaking earlier than the rest of the state.