for"Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

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>> ASHLEY: Coming up, hit the water on a historic World War II ship.

Explore a farming community preserving a profound legacy.

Explore a farming community preserving a profound legacy.

Learn all about Indiana's state insect, and discover trees that are out of this world.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana"!

♪ >> ASHLEY: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla.

And we're joining you, once again, from the Angel Mounds Historic Site in Evansville.

This 557-acre site was once home to more than 1,000 members of the Mississippian culture.

This small city thrived along the banks of the Ohio River hundreds of years before Europeans arrived in North America.

11 earthen mounds, where significant buildings once stood, are still visible.

And this is truly a unique site.

And in the five years we've been doing this show, this is one of the most unique sites that I've been to.

If you are a history buff, you will definitely enjoy this place.

Up next, we are staying right here in Evansville, where Producer Jason Pear takes us aboard the USS LST-325.

♪ >> LST is a landing ship tank.

There were 1,051 of these built during World War II.

Their main job was to get tanks and heavy stuff to enemy beaches where there's no port facilities, because the enemy already owns the ports, like in France at D-Day.

So this opened up the whole Atlantic Wall.

And we talk a lot about Normandy on here, because this particular ship was there at D-Day in North Africa.

We remind folks that there's 60-some odd landings to do in the Pacific after D-Day, and the LST was critical to all of that.

♪ This is the only one out of 1,051 that's still in its original World War II configuration and sails on its own power.

There was 229 LSTs at D-Day, for example, and only one of them was still floating, and you are on it today here in Evansville.

♪ Evansville, the shipyard, which is less than a mile from where we are sitting, built the most LSTs of any shipyard in the country.

So Indiana is the LST capital of the world, because Jeffersonville built them too.

167 was the record here in Evansville.

♪ It's a flat-bottomed ship with a big hole in the front.

Duh.

Who would have ever thought of that?

Actually, the British did.

♪ The original concept was British, but America made them all.

This ship goes up on the beach, and it can unload 20 Sherman tanks, 30 trucks, and 200 troops.

When I say a flat bottom, it's got a slight slope to it, which is engineered to be the average grade of your average beach in the world.

>> We're good to try the props, cap.

>> All right.

Here goes.

>> They are going to cast off here in a little bit at 10:00.

They are heading on their annual trip.

This is our main fund-raiser.

We usually make two to three stops.

One major stop, which will be Charleston, West Virginia; and two lesser stops, the first one being in Brandenburg, Kentucky; and then Ashland, Kentucky.

>> You are clear to come ahead, captain.

>> And they will do tours, like we do here in Evansville all year.

Only in that three and a half weeks they're gone, they will take in more people than we get all year here at Evansville.

♪ The crew on here today will be about 40 people, average age 69 or 70.

And they come from all over the country, really all over the eastern U.S., with a few coming from as far out, you know, in the far west.

So they look forward to this.

And then they're ready to get off the ship in three and a half weeks and go home.

It's hot, hard work, but it's a labor of love.

>> Smooth sailing, LST-325.

>> Thank you, Mr. Donahue.

And thank you for all you do.

>> A lot of them bring their grandpas, their dads here, who are in their 90s.

They come from wherever in the country because grandpa hasn't seen an LST or Evansville, Indiana, since 1943.

So that's the most gratifying thing that I see here.

♪ >> ASHLEY: There are two things that really struck me about this story.

The first one being just the mere size of that ship.

Thinking about it in the context of what it used to do and how many people lived on it.

I mean, that is astonishing.

And then the second thing being that they had people who worked on this ship, or these kinds of ships, come back and work on it now.

It has to be such a magical experience for them.

Want to learn more?

Just head to lstmemorial.org.

Up next, Producer Jason Pear takes us to Gibson County, where one family is preserving an agricultural heritage that spans generations.

♪ >> Lyles Station in its zenith had over 800 families here.

People were here, like, 100 years even before it became Lyles Station.

So it was a colony, and it was an area where the Blacks had came and settled and survived, and, you know, made a way for theirselves.

It's a farming community.

Even where we are at right now was a part of Lyles Station, because a man named Thomas Cole owned thousands and thousands of acres that went all the way to Mount Carmel.

He owned it, and he was a Black man.

When I grew up in Lyles Station, it was a whole lot of family and friends, and we all went to Wayman Chapel Church, which was the center of Lyles Station.

We would have picnics.

We would have barbecues.

We would have fish fries.

And Lyles Station, right now, is the remnants of what it was.

Our part of the family, we've always worked the ground.

What it was then, it was farming, but it was also homesteading.

My father was recognized -- is recognized as one of the last remaining African American farmers farming land that's been in their family since pre-Civil War.

It's been passed down for generation and generation, and he's farming that still.

Today is the next generation, which is my son, who has decided that he wants to do the produce farming.

>> You know, there's a lot of things that you think you might want to do growing up, and farming never was a thought of mine at all.

Around 2016, when my grandfather was getting acknowledged and Lyles Station, a bell kind of rung in my head, or a lightbulb, as you could say, just kind of went off and was, like, you know, my grandpa is the last one that they are saying in our family.

So I just, like, you know, thought it would have been easy at the time.

Like, hey, I can grow a garden.

Hey, I can sell some fresh produce.

Not really knowing what it all took at the time, just had an idea and just ran with it, really.

>> We're actually on what's called Produce Alley, and there's other produce stands on down the road.

So this is called the Gibson County's Produce Alley.

We do food giveaways.

So what we do is we go into the community, partner with organizations such as Young and Established, which work with inner city youth and give them programs.

We are doing a program with them to where we are giving away a fresh local produce bag.

You know, those are the most important seeds that I feel like I plant, is that -- is that seed of sustainability, that seed of opportunity.

We've hooked up with other Black farmers.

We did farmer's markets in the underserved areas.

In Evansville, we've hooked up with the churches that's in the underserved area, and we do youth programs.

With those youth programs, some of them we take them from seed, all the way to market, to canning and preserving.

So we teach them how to grow the food.

We educate them about food.

We educate them on the opportunities that agriculture can bring to them, because for them, agriculture is great, great grandpa or some old man sitting on a tractor making dust.

Agriculture is so much more than farming.

And that's what we try to plant those seeds.

>> My grandpa, he wants to see the best for me.

So he encourages me.

He gives me a lot of information to help me to be successful out here, because he's done it before too.

He's helped his brothers.

So he definitely gives me a lot of words of encouragement.

He probably won't say it, but I'm pretty sure he enjoys to see me out here.

>> You need to understand your roots, right?

For me, I recognized that Black farming is becoming extinct.

And I recognized the good life I had by living on a farm.

The people here worked, and they had their own community, and, to me, it's important for people to know, you know?

And it's important for people to get to come back home, you know, at some point in time, you know, because there's so much joy in the people coming.

And I guess for me, my joy comes from everybody else's joy.

>> ASHLEY: I've definitely talked on here before about how I have tried to garden in the past, and how I'm really interested in growing my own food.

So this story was particularly interesting to me, and how they passed down this -- this skill from generation to generation.

It's something that I would definitely love to pass down to my son as well.

You can find out more information at legacytasteofthegarden.com.

Up next, Producer John Timm explores the magical world of the firefly.

♪ >> On summer nights, dusk was coming on.

And as a little kid, you know, you can't stay up too late, but we were allowed to go run around in our bare feet out in the yards and catch lightning bugs.

♪ My name is Marc Lame.

I'm an entomologist, and I work for Indiana University.

♪ The firefly has an interesting history in Indiana because the most common firefly in this part of the country is called the Say's firefly, named after a guy named Thomas Say.

♪ Thomas Say is from Indiana, and he actually kind of became the father of American entomology.

♪ He discovered this bug in the mid-1800s, you know, kind of made it famous.

In the 1990s, there was a trend for states to have their own insect.

2018, the legislature did basically adopt the firefly as the state insect for Indiana, and Governor Holcomb proclaimed it so.

♪ The firefly is a phenomenal insect.

I mean, of course, as an entomologist, I think all insects are really cool, but the firefly is one of the really cool ones because it lights up, you know?

I mean, that's pretty cool.

And they have lots of different behavior that has to do with their luminescence, and basically it revolves around mating.

♪ The primary reason that they light up is to send signals for mating.

So it's the male, and it attracts the female.

♪ The firefly is a beetle.

A lot of people don't think of it as a beetle.

It has softer wings, but it is a beetle.

The adult hatches from a pupa.

Most of us think of that as the cocoon.

And so they hatch out and they mate, and then the female lays the eggs.

Those turn into larvae, which are predacious.

They have a very important part in our ecosystem, as far as balancing out the good bugs and the bad bugs.

They are considered a good bug.

There's over 2,000 species of fireflies, and they have different habitats.

Primarily, they like fields, the woods, or swampy areas, and that's where you see the most of them.

♪ >> The reason that most scientists say that the firefly is having problems is, like so many other species, it's losing habitat.

So a lot of our fields, what are prime habitat in the United States for the firefly are being turned into agriculture and/or houses or cities.

And so, by doing that, it gets rid of habitat.

And loss of habitat is the biggest reasons why species go extinct.

♪ So many of the fireflies are, which is outside of cities in agricultural areas where pesticides are used.

So the pesticides and the loss of habitat are big reasons, but they are also, you know, the reasons why we are losing a lot of insect species and a lot of species.

♪ Kind of the perfect storm which worries so many of us is the light pollution.

A lot of the insects that you see during the day, you know, there's not -- there's no impact from light pollution, but insects at night, particularly the ones who rely on specific lighting to reproduce, if there is light pollution, then they -- you know, that can interrupt their reproduction.

And so we're a little worried that the three of these things are actually going to cause the demise of lightning bugs.

♪ Global climate change will have an impact on fireflies.

Fireflies, like most other insects, are very habitat-specific.

And so as we change the ecosystem around the firefly, that will have an impact.

We are not quite sure what.

It usually is not a good thing.

♪ Any time you lose a part of the food web and a part of the ecosystem, there's going to be an impact.

Chances are, we're going to have a few more pests than we used to because the fireflies, as predators, would get rid of a number of pests that are out there, other insects, because they would feed on them.

So if they are not there to feed on them, the things that we consider pests can go unchecked.

And so that's an ecological problem.

♪ Counter each of the problems.

So use less pesticide.

Be much more discriminant in how you use pesticide.

Provide habitat.

Leave some areas of yards or parks unmowed.

Maybe try to work on policies for cities to reduce their lightning pollution.

♪ Kids, in general, look at lightning bugs, and it's like magic.

And anyone who is watching this probably knows that feeling.

And then, of course, most of us don't lose that feeling.

We just think, you know, lightning bugs are magical.

Everyone needs a little magic, and we hate to lose magic.

♪ >> ASHLEY: So many new things that I learned about fireflies or lightning bugs, as I used to call them as a child.

You know, I had no idea that there were different kinds.

I didn't know that they ate other bugs.

You know, I love that there are people out there dedicating their lives to studying this kind of thing.

Up next, Ron Prickel brings us the story of Indiana's moon trees.

>> Ignition sequence start.

Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

Launch commit.

Liftoff.

We have liftoff with Apollo 14.

Three minutes past the hour.

>> Apollo 14, launched on January 31st, 1971.

Five days later, astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the moon, while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module.

Packed away in a small container in Roosa's personal kit were over 400 tree seeds.

Scientists were curious to know if tree seeds, after their journey into the microgravity of space, would sprout and look the same as earth-grown trees.

>> So they returned from the moon trip, and during decontamination of the space vehicle, they thought they were destroyed.

And they got all mixed up.

They came out of the containers, and they ended up at a Forest Service lab, who they decided to try to see if they would grow.

>> And grow they did!

The seedlings, now known as moon trees, were given away.

Most of them planted during public ceremonies in 1976 to help commemorate the U.S. bicentennial.

Five of these lunar legends made their way to Indiana.

There is one moon tree, a sycamore, still growing on the Indiana State House property in downtown Indianapolis.

Three other moon tree locations are in southern Indiana.

>> I don't think anybody back then thought they were going to be that big of a deal.

And so they got planted, you know, all over the world and country, like I said.

And no one really wrote down where they were; or if they did, those records have been lost.

So several people have taken an interest in the trees and have documented to right around 80 of them across the country.

And we are lucky enough to have these two sweetgums here, and three other trees in the state of Indiana.

>> These two sweetgum moon trees are located on the property of the Hoosier National Forest Ranger Station in Tell City, Indiana.

>> Two or three people stop by every year, and we're not stingy about them.

There's one gentleman that lives in Germany that actually got ahold of us, and he was in The States, and he's collecting seed from the different moon trees and taking them to germinate them and let them live on.

So we did help him get some seed from these two trees, and I'm assuming other people that have them on their property were equally accommodating.

There were seeds that they kept here on earth from the same genetic background that they germinated as well, and there wasn't any significant difference.

So I don't think anybody knew at the time, but that was the hypothesis, that it wouldn't matter.

♪ >> You see some top die back, and it's starting to expand, which can be problematic.

We're going to treat it chemically, and then hopefully it will heal the trees.

♪ It's probably been forgotten a little bit, but it's a neat thing to talk to people about when they are here.

Every year, I go work with fifth grade classes, and I always take a branch off one of these trees and tell them the story.

So hopefully that will live on.

There's not too many people that can, you know, claim that they have a couple moon trees in their city, that they can just go look at or have a picnic under.

It's a piece of our history.

I mean, it may not happen again for a really long time, if at all.

So I think we need to, you know, remember they are here and not forget what Stuart did.

They are standard issued sweetgums, as far as I can tell.

They do not drop green cheese balls that I'm aware of.

[ Chuckles ] >> Just a few miles east of Tell City is Cannelton, Indiana, the home of Camp Koch Girl Scout Camp.

That's the location of another Indiana moon tree.

>> If we have people coming up here to camp, the moon tree is, you know, talked about a little bit.

So I know our campers and people that visit ask questions about it.

Just the history of being a moon tree, I think, is a good thing for us to relate to, you know?

We actually went to the moon.

Took seeds, and it's grown.

So I think it's pretty significant for it.

One has to wonder, though, if a moon tree needs any kind of extra care.

>> We've just been trying to, you know, get the ground, get the roots covered up, keep it trimmed a little bit from laying on the ground.

When the kids are on site, it's well used.

We had an ice storm came through here and busted some limbs off it, but it really bloomed again, you know.

It just -- just like every other tree, you know, it just kept growing right back.

No little moon martians or anything.

>> What kind of effect does long-term exposure to a moon tree have on the human body?

The last moon tree we visited is located in Lincoln State Park.

Michael Crews, the park's interpretive naturalist, has a long history with this site's moon tree.

>> I know it was the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the country.

So it was 1976.

And there was a big Girl Scout encampment here at the park.

And somehow the Girl Scouts got ahold of one of the seedlings and planted it here, along with a time capsule.

And so there were hundreds, if not thousands of Girl Scouts, that were involved in the planting of the tree originally.

I know my sisters were involved in it, and I remember it myself as a little kid.

I was actually here.

The tree seems to be normal, and, you know, it's fairly healthy as far as I'm concerned.

Still seeding, and it's growing.

The crown is very large, and it looks like it's doing pretty well, actually.

Maybe they are still secretly looking at it, I don't know.

It's on our property maps, our Lincoln State Park property maps as an attraction, and people come just to see it, I know that.

And I get a lot of questions about it, where's the moon tree?

Where do you call that the moon tree?

♪ >> As the moon trees continue to grow, they serve as a reminder of the Apollo program's manned missions to the moon, and as a tribute to Astronaut Roosa, while they reach back toward the moon they once circled.

>> ASHLEY: You know, this got me thinking, if I were an astronaut, what would I bring to the moon to see how it reacted and back?

And, you know, I've definitely talked on this show about my love of coffee.

So I think I'm going to bring coffee beans, and see exactly what they do.

Does coffee taste different in space?

Maybe.

We'll find out!

[ Laughter ] You can learn more at the address on your screen.

And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

But before we say good-bye, let's take a little bit more time and explore the Angel Mounds Historic Site.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you.