Circle City Tours

10/21/2026

The most beautiful bucolic place in the world as it stands apart from the world.

Tucked onto a forested bluff above a wide bend of the Ohio River sits a small Indiana college that was teaching students nearly a decade before Indiana itself turned twenty years old as a state.

Hanover College traces its roots to January 1, 1827, when Presbyterian minister John Finley Crowe opened a small academy in a log cabin near his home in Hanover, Indiana. The state granted it an academy charter in 1829, and the college charter followed in 1833, making Hanover Indiana's oldest private college. Crowe is sometimes called "twice the founder" of the school because he had to rebuild it after an earlier attempt to relocate it to nearby Madison fell apart.

Today the campus covers roughly 650 acres overlooking three bends of the Ohio River, with Classic Hall perched on a bluff locals call the Point, giving students one of the most striking campus views in the entire state. Generations of Hoosiers have walked that same bluff path toward the river without ever learning the story of the stubborn minister who kept rebuilding his tiny academy until it finally stuck.

The image above is an AI-generated illustration of the Hanover campus and river bluff. Have you ever stood at that overlook above the Ohio River, and did you know Indiana had a college older than most of its own counties?



AI-assisted content: text and/or visuals in this post were created with the help of AI and reviewed for accuracy.

10/18/2026

10/13/2026

This state we live in, its capital city and even our minor league baseball team are named for the Native Americans who lived here for centuries before Europeans arrived.

Some of the largest groups of Native Americans who lived in this area were the Potawatomi, the Miami, the Kickapoo/Mascouten, the Piankashaw and the Shawnee.

But as the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary, George Strack, a Miami tribal historic preservation officer, said most Hoosiers don’t learn the real history of how groups of Native Americans were forced to leave their land.

“That loss of community is really important. Families got broken apart, and this community is living in diaspora,” Strack said.

That dark history includes the Potawatomi Trail of Death in 1838, when a group of 859 Potawatomi were forced to leave their homes. They walked 660 miles to Kansas through extreme heat and 40 people — mostly children — died.

Today, only two federally recognized groups of Native Americans have land in Indiana — the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.

If you’d like to learn more about Native Americans, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in downtown Indianapolis helps share the stories of Native Americans through the display of Native American art and art inspired by them.

09/22/2026

Fantastic site and a fantastic sight.

Before it was the heart of Holliday Park, The Ruins sat in disrepair behind a chain-link fence for over twenty years. But its story stretches even further back.

In the 1950s, New York City’s St. Paul Building was demolished, threatening Karl Bitter’s work, "The Races of Man"—three massive Indiana limestone statues resting on its facade. Indianapolis won a national competition to rescue and bring these sculptures home, eventually assembling them into the park structure designed by Elmer Taflinger.

By the early 2000s, time had taken its toll on The Ruins.

After a $3.2 million campaign led by the Holliday Park Foundation and a visionary design by local architects Eric Fulford and Ann Reed, the space was reimagined. In 2016, the fence came down, giving way to shimmering fountains, lush gardens, and open plazas 🌸

Ten years ago this month, an iconic piece of art became a safe, welcoming gathering place for everyone. Today, we celebrate a decade of weddings, summer fountain days, Rock the Ruins concerts, and everyday park strolls.

📸: "The Fault In Our Stars" Photo Tour

09/13/2026

The BEST place to start any morning in Indy! Hot yeast glazed donuts that melt in your mouth😋

Carl and Mildred Long opened a small bakery on Indianapolis's west side in 1955 with one idea: a warm, honest place that made everything fresh, every single day. Seventy-one years later, that idea hasn't budged an inch. 🍩

Long's Bakery is still family-owned, now five generations deep, and the people behind the counter aren't just cashiers, they're the actual bakers, on the bench making the dough themselves before most of the city is even awake. No pre-made mixes, no shortcuts. The bakery is famous for its yeast-glazed donuts, made from a recipe that's been handed down inside the same family the entire time, and the two Indianapolis locations still open at 5:30 in the morning because that's when the first batch needs to be ready.

There's something genuinely rare about a business that's survived this long doing things almost exactly the way it started. Trends have come and gone, ownership groups have bought up bakery after bakery around the city, and Long's just kept frying dough the old way, one tray at a time. It's the kind of Indianapolis institution you don't fully appreciate until you try to imagine the city without it.

If you grew up on the west side, there's a decent chance a Long's donut was involved in more mornings than you can count. 🌅

09/12/2026

Another site on our route—