>> Funding for "Journey Indiana" was provided in part by: >> The WTIU Vehicle Donation Program.

Proceeds from accepted donations of a car or other vehicle make this program possible.

Most vehicles are accepted and pick up can be arranged at no cost.

Learn more at WTIU.org/support.

>> Charitable IRA rollover gifts.

Individuals aged 70 and a half or older may make a tax-free charitable distribution from their IRA to WTIU.

Consult your advisor and visit Indianapublicmedia.org/support for more details.

>> WTIU sustaining members.

Committing to regular monthly contributions, providing WFIU and WTIU with reliable ongoing support.

Becoming a sustainer is one of the most effective ways to support public media.

>> And by viewers like you.

Thank you!

♪ >> Today on "Journey Indiana," we're going to Orange County.

Learn about their colorful history.

>> When he discovered the mineral water here in French Lick, he found it actually was a natural laxative.

>> Tour the Eighth Wonder of the World.

>> Basically, they walk in, they look up, and their mouth drops open.

>> Jam out with a legendary local family.

>> It's more about encouraging and getting together with family and friends and making music and making community through making music.

>> And enjoy an Indiana safari.

>> So it's just a lot more personal, a lot more intimate versus like a zoo or something like that, where you are just going to see the animals from a distance.

>> That's coming up on this episode of "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> There's a lot more to Orange County than meets the eye.

Let's take a moment to learn a little more about this remarkable corner of Indiana.

♪ >> 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.

>> Next, let's take a tour of one of the most remarkable architectural marvels in all of Indiana, the West Baden Hotel.

♪ >> There are few structures in Indiana that match the beauty and grandeur of the West Baden Springs Hotel.

Constructed in 1902, it was intended to rival the opulent French Lick Resort just up the road.

The circular brick building with its massive dome was, and still is, an architectural marvel.

It's small wonder that for decades this place attracted the nation's upper crust who came to drink from the area's fabled mineral springs and rest in the lap of luxury.

>> Well, first of all, I'd just like to welcome all of you to the West Baden Springs Hotel, once known as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

>> There's so much to explore here.

So we decided to spend the day with historian and tour guide Jeff Lane.

He's been sharing the building's remarkable story for the better part of a decade.

>> I was an elementary teacher at Springs Valley Elementary School for 32 years.

I taught third, fourth and fifth grades, and I especially focused on history.

And so I had thought at some point, wouldn't it be great to work here full time?

And so this is what I do in retirement.

>> Gone are the days of luxury hotel competition.

Today, the West Baden is under the umbrella of the French Lick Resort, and Jeff is historian for both establishments.

However, tour goers can still get a better idea of what made this hotel such a compelling destination.

It starts with the atrium.

♪ >> Well-known architects of the day wouldn't even consider it.

They said it's not possible.

>> Six stories tall and 600 feet in circumference, ringed by balconied rooms that face inward and topped with its iconic 200-foot freestanding steel dome, the largest in the world when it was built.

This is the beating heart of the West Baden Hotel.

>> I love to be at that concierge desk when I see people come in for the first time.

Basically, they walk in, they look up, and their mouth drops open.

And I immediately, if I'm there, I say, it's your first time, isn't it?

♪ >> From there, the tour heads to the lobby, where Jeff highlights the many changes the building has undergone.

>> They had to lock the doors on July 1st, 1932, due to The Great Depression of '29.

That was the end of the lobby as we know it.

>> In 1934, the building was donated to the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits.

They ran it as a seminary for three decades.

>> This became their private chapel.

They blocked it off from the atrium.

Where you -- most of you are standing, between those two columns, they built a large altar.

>> From 1968 to 1983, the building was a branch of Northwood University, known as the Northwood Institute.

>> Then when Northwood came in, the altar was still in place.

So Northwood built a larger stage on top of that altar, and that is where they could have their performances for various groups who would come in to see their plays.

And I remember coming here as an elementary student to their plays that they would perform for us.

>> Along the way, Jeff also points out how close they were to losing the building.

It sat vacant for years before The Cook Group, led by Bloomington billionaire Bill Cook, stepped in to restore the hotel to its former glory.

>> And I often tell people on the tour, because this building was vacant for 13 years, if something had not been done soon, we might not be standing where we are today.

♪ >> But fortunately, the building and Jeff are still standing.

And they've got a truly monumental story to tell.

>> I just love sharing history.

And I love to tell the story of this grand hotel, and it just does me so much good.

>> Follow me.

♪ >> Next, we'll discover a unique Orange County musical tradition, and the musicians that keep it alive.

♪ >> Out on Grease Gravy Road, just south of Paoli, Stephen and Nancy Dickey are hosting an old-time music jam with Creekside Band.

They do this every week, but generally in the lodge at Spring Mill State Park.

Today, the group came out to Stephen and Nancy's to honor these keepers of the flame for their preservation of old-time music and an old-time way of life.

>> It's not by accident that Stephen has come to carry on the time-honored musical traditions of Orange County.

Around here, he's musical royalty.

♪ Stephen's father, Lotus Dickey, became a prominent figure in the world of old-time music.

Lotus was a blast from the past, even back in the '80s.

His notoriety grew.

They even named a couple of music festivals after him, including Bloomington's Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, because he carried with him something special, something miraculously out of place in the modern world.

>> I think we took note because he was somebody that the younger people were looking for.

There was somebody that represented this tradition.

He was continuing to write music.

He very much was a very distinctive voice, and he had this amazing talent.

I think that's what actually brought him up, was not the fact that he knew all of these old tunes, but the fact that he was this amazing musician and songwriter and fiddler.

♪ ♪ Better end this little song I've told you all about her ♪ >> There is so much amazing knowledge in the state, and Lotus, just for a moment, caused us all to pause and take look and see Indiana as something special.

And I think that that's what he really brought to us.

>> And today, Stephen carries on the values, the traditions, and the music he inherited from his father.

>> He took up the mantle after his father passed away.

And remember, it was all about music at home, music with family, music with friends, and Stephen became the kind of ambassador for that.

>> Stephen started playing music alongside his father as far back as he can remember.

>> Going to hear him play out at Brown County State Park, and this old guy with his guitar and fiddle, and he had this younger guy behind him, and that younger guy was Stephen Dickey.

And now Stephen's about the age that his father was when I first got to hear him as a young college student.

>> While he may have slowed down a bit these days, he and Nancy still play together, learning new songs and new ways to play them.

>> And, of course, nurturing for future generations, an Orange County tradition.

>> There's more jamming happening in little Orange County than almost any place I know in the state of Indiana.

And it's very distinctive in the sense that it's this kind of egalitarian, local, no one is trying to show off too much.

It's more about encouraging and getting together with family and friends and making music and making community through making music.

>> Their hospitality is undeniable, and their love of the music, the tradition, and the community is infectious, and more than just a little worthy of some recognition.

>> And so patterned after the National Endowment for the Arts, I started a program called the Indiana Heritage Fellowships.

And we've had everything from old-time fiddling to ballet folklorico to woodcarving and rag rug weavings.

We've had all different types of traditional arts, but it was kind of special to me when Stephen and Nancy Dickey got it, because Stephen will be the first to say, he's not the best singer in the world.

He's not the best fiddler in the world.

He's just the person the people go to.

He's that cohesive thing that connects them to the present, but also to the past.

And I think that that role, he takes very seriously.

>> Out here on the same patch of rolling hilltop that Lotus Dickey, and his father before him called home, Stephen and Nancy's door is always open.

Come on in, find yourself a chair and spend some time with a musical tradition that's just as moving and enriching as spending an afternoon at the Dickey homestead.

>> Thinking about Stephen and Nancy and the kind of intergenerational qualities.

There are very few young people that come into the jams these days, but Stephen and Nancy do this wonderful thing of -- of making sure that they're being kind of fed and kept.

They just want to encourage.

And that -- I think that's how they see themselves, encouragers.

♪ [ Applause ] >> Thank you so much to the Dickeys for having us.

Thank you, guys.

>> Last, let's head to the Wilstem Wildlife Park for an animal adventure.

♪ >> We are an animal safari park.

We are in between Paoli and French Lick, which is part of Orange County.

Wilstem is proud to be located in southern Indiana.

It's just a unique option for our state and for our region, really, to be offering the conservation efforts that we are here, and just to be bringing guests in and educating them in our home state about how different we are versus other facilities that they may have been to in the past.

We bring north of 100,000 visitors annually here to our facility.

So we have a lot of people, a lot of foot traffic coming into town to come see us.

We have several experiences and tours that they can do here when they're visiting.

So our drive-thru safari is very popular.

There's two options for that.

There's a self-guided, where you drive through in our own vehicle, and then there's also a guided wagon safari tour option as well.

Each are great.

You know, both very, very popular.

The wagons are very popular with younger children.

It's a little bit more interactive, led by one of our guides.

They are explaining the animals that you are seeing as you are going through the safari.

So it's just a little bit more informative in that manner.

But the self-guided is also a great option.

So in the safari, we have a wide variety of animals there.

We've got birds.

We've got ostriches and emus.

And if you've been here, you know the emus because if you've done the safari, you've definitely met them.

They love the feed.

We also have camels that are also very, very popular.

They love to be fed as well.

We've got llamas.

We've got Nilgai, which is an antelope breed.

We've got eland, which is another antelope breed.

We've got fallow deer and sika deer.

We've got all kinds of different cattle breeds out there.

We've got bison, a growing herd of bison that's been very popular.

We've got elk.

Just all kinds of thing.

Aoudad, which are also -- they kind of look like goats.

They've got curved horns.

They're called Barbary sheep, and we are always looking to expand our options as far as our safari animals go, and just having fun out there and getting some different species that you may not see at other facilities.

In the animal safari, a lot of times our guests will come in mentioning the emus or the camels, and we know their names and we're able to tell them about their names.

And oftentimes, people will email us afterwards with pictures of animals from the safari and say, who was this one, and things like that.

So it's just a lot more personal.

A lot more intimate than -- versus like a zoo or something like that, where you are just going to see the animals from a distance.

So the Roos and Crew building has all kinds of our smaller animals in it.

You're going to see primates that consist of our cotton-top tamarins, our squirrel monkeys, our roughed lemur.

We've got a binturong in there, which is also called a bearcat.

We've got a couple sloths that are showstoppers.

They are very, very popular with our encounter guests.

We've got several different reptiles.

We've got our kangaroos that guests love, and they can actually meet in our mini kangaroo encounters.

We've got tortoises and turtles.

We actually just recently built a turtle enclosure that's been very popular with guests to be able to see those turtles.

We have armadillos that recently had a baby.

We did a contest on Facebook for our guests to be able to name him.

His name is Bowser, who is doing fantastic.

We've got a couple of giraffes in that location as well.

Burt's been here for years, and we have a new 16-month-old baby giraffe.

His name is Daktari, and he recently joined us.

So we're super excited to have him.

He's doing great with guests and is becoming best friends with Burt very quickly.

That's kind of the animals in the Roos and Crew building.

So what makes Wilstem different is we always tell people that when they come to Wilstem, they come to actually meet our animals, not just see them.

So our encounters are super interactive, hands on.

They are up close and personal.

Our animals have names.

So when they leave, they know that they met Luna the sloth or Burt the giraffe.

It's just a lot more interactive and personal in that manner, our animal encounters are.

So all of our animal encounters are driven completely by educating the guests, and talking with them about the specific species that they are seeing and that they are meeting.

So our keepers are fantastic.

They are all very well educated on those specific animals, and they do a great job of giving facts to the guests as they present their encounter to them.

The encounters are also very interactive, in that there's always a question portion where the guests can ask any questions that they might have about that specific animal.

Our keepers are happy to answer those questions, and that's really how the encounters become interactive in that manner, and basically focus completely on educating the guests while they're here.

So all of our encounters are unique to our facility.

So we've actually created those all of ourselves.

And like I said, they're very hands on.

So our goal is for guests to leave here with an experience that they remember for years to come, that they are laughing through, that they are talking about with their children and grandchildren and so on and so forth and their neighbors and spreading the word about what we're doing here.

So they are structured to be interactive, to be hands on and to be educational in the manner that they can take something away with them when they leave our park.

>> We'll end today with a southern Indiana winter wonderland.

The Paoli Peaks Ski Resort.

See you next time on "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> Funding for "Journey Indiana" was provided in part by: >> The WTIU Vehicle Donation Program.

Proceeds from accepted donations of a car or other vehicle make this program possible.

Most vehicles are accepted and pick up can be arranged at no cost.

Learn more at WTIU.org/support.

>> Charitable IRA rollover gifts.

Individuals aged 70 and a half or older may make a tax-free charitable distribution from their IRA to WTIU.

Consult your advisor and visit Indianapublicmedia.org/support for more details.

>> WTIU sustaining members.

Committing to regular monthly contributions, providing WFIU and WTIU with reliable ongoing support.

Becoming a sustainer is one of the most effective ways to support public media.

>> And by viewers like you.

Thank you!