♪ >> Orange County, in south central Indiana, contains a modest 20,000 residents, spread across small towns and rural farmland.

Life here may seem plain, but the county's history is uniquely colorful.

Fortunately, there are two great museums there you can visit to get a little more insight.

First up, the Orange County Indiana Historic Museum in the county seat of Paoli.

>> Orange County has a unique history, a long, rich history.

And so our mission, our goal, is really to preserve the actual artifacts and the stories that are linked to those artifacts.

>> Much of this museum is dedicated to the industries that flourished in the county over the past two centuries.

>> Orange County had a rich history with the wood industry.

So we had a lot of factories that manufactured different types of products.

We made beautiful furniture in Orange County.

We also had handle factories that made croquet sets and baseball bats and basket factories.

We also had a factory that made television sets and radios and record players at one point.

>> Other exhibits strive to represent the day-to-day lives of Orange County residents.

>> A fun part of our museum upstairs is a recreation of an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse, just as you would have found dotted across Orange County once upon a time.

And so that's a fun -- fun exhibit area.

>> The museum is free and open to the public, and so no matter what you're looking for, this is the perfect place to dive into Orange County's history.

>> Hopefully you'll take away something of interest or some historical tidbit about Orange County.

♪ >> A few miles west of the Paoli, you will find the French Lick West Baden Museum.

The two small towns it represents are primarily known for the historic French Lick Resort, the West Baden Hotel, and the mineral springs that fueled their growth.

But as this nostalgic repository demonstrates, that's only the beginning of this area's rich history.

>> We primarily start our story at the turn of the century of the 1800s, as lots of settlers and trappers and traders began moving from the east to the west, and trading with the Native Americans in our area, discovering the local mineral water and creating French Lick.

>> And just like the mineral water there, in French Lick and West Baden, colorful stories seem to have a way of bubbling to the surface.

>> Dr. Bowles, he was a snake oil salesman, as we call him today.

When he discovered the mineral water here in French Lick, he found it actually worked.

It was a natural laxative.

And they built the first French Lick Springs Hotel as a stagecoach stop, including a spring that you could directly drink Dr. Bowles' famous mineral water.

That would later go on to be what we know as Pluto.

The most popular mineral water in the world for almost 50 years.

♪ The Cross brothers, Henry and Ferdinand Cross, were two of the most world-renowned artists of their own regard.

Henry is a world-famous painter.

Ferdinand Cross, his brother, would start a stone company in Chicago, creating monuments all across the country.

By their elder ages, they both came home to French Lick, Indiana, their new home, and they both had a small little operation doing a tourist attraction.

♪ Our museum, of course, tells the story of The Hick from French Lick, Larry Bird.

He was a 1974 graduate of Springs Valley High School.

Our museum tells his story from 1954, his birth, all the way up to high school, into the Celtics, into the Olympics and into his time coaching with the Pacers.

♪ >> Now, no disrespect to Larry Legend, but the museum's real showstopper is a massive diorama depicting the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, which was headquartered in French Lick from 1913 to 1929.

>> The diorama here at our museum is considered the world's largest circus diorama, not by square footage but by number of pieces.

The diorama is the creation of one man from Vancouver, British Columbia, by the name of Peter Gorman.

He started it at a young age, and has consistently worked on it throughout his life.

There are over 500,000 pieces in that diorama and counting.

Each year, we add about 1,000 pieces.

♪ >> However, like this intricate diorama, the French Lick West Baden Museum needs to be seen up close to be fully appreciated.

>> There are so many small stories that are so important.

Our museum tells them and connects the dots.