Brown County & Clifty Falls: Southern Indiana's Wild Terrain

Southern Indiana's two most physically dramatic state parks are within 90 minutes of Indianapolis on opposite ends of the same hill country — Brown County State Park, the largest state park in Indiana, has a 20,000-acre hardwood forest with 70 miles of mountain bike trails that attract riders from across the Midwest, and Clifty Falls State Park sits above a 200-foot canyon carved by Clifty Creek into the limestone bluffs above the Ohio River, with four named waterfalls visible from the trail network in under two miles of walking. The village of Nashville in Brown County anchors a regional arts colony — galleries, craft studios, and restaurants centered around a single commercial block — that has operated since the early 20th century when landscape painters discovered the autumn hardwood color.