Iconic spot: The restored 1934-era Yoho General Store still sits at the corner of Indiana 43 and Tulip Road near Solsberry.It’s included in “Spirit of Greene County,” a new documentary to be aired at 8 p.m. Monday on WTIU. Courtesy Indiana Public Media
Until autumn of 2019, Reuben Browning had only visited Greene County once on a blueberry-picking mission with his wife and kids.
By the following summer, he’d become a bit of regular at venerable Yoho General Store in Solsberry and several of Greene County’s other “little gems.”
“I probably ate there 10 times,” Browning said, “and that doesn’t include the times I took my kids there.”
His on-duty outings came in his role as a filmmaker. Browning produced the new documentary “Spirit of Greene County.” It makes its broadcast debut at 8 p.m. Monday on WTIU, the PBS station based in Bloomington.
The film is chock full of those little gems, Browning explained. Greene County contains enough off-the-beaten-path virtues that Browning had to leave several out of his 56-minute documentary.
“As a storyteller, you have so much material, and you can’t include everything,” he said.
A few of slices of the county’s heritage didn’t find a spot in the footage because the coronavirus pandemic shut down or disrupted those events or sites.
Browning and his crew began filming in fall of 2019, but worked stopped the following March as COVID-19 spread across the country and globe. Filming resumed later in 2020 and wrapped up in 2021. Thus, some traditions would normally occur during that four-month shutdown gap couldn’t be included.
“So, I think there’s more things to explore there that I just wasn’t able to, because of COVID,” Browning said.
Still, “Spirit of Greene County” packs plenty of interesting surprises for Hoosiers who may have only driven through its hilly countryside on Indiana 54, U.S. 231 or a few other highways. Browning carried on after the shutdown, using COVID precautions and a slimmer crew.
The Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum is one of the hidden pluses he found. It lies within the woods near Solsberry in the county’s northeastern corner. The museum is a three-mile series of trails through the wilderness, dotted with more than 100 sculptures from artists across the planet. It’s also the site of artist workshops and arts education events, like crafting cast iron.
When people hear about Browning’s “Spirit of Greene County” project, they’ll ask him to recommend places to visit. The Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum quickly gets mentioned.
“It’s a weird mixture of fine art and nature — the kind of thing you can only find in Greene County,” he said. Once his kids visited it, “they immediately wanted to go back again.”
Four miles south of that cultural anomaly sits the Yoho General Store. Its history dates back to the Depression era, when brothers Frank, Oscar and William Yoho ran a country store at the corner of Indiana 43 and County Road 420 North — first in the original building and then, after a fire, in the current structure. A series of local owners continued until 2012, when CFC Properties — a real estate branch of the global medical devices company, Cook Group, in Bloomington — purchased, renovated and restored the store.
Its deli cafe serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, produce, necessities and ice cream.
“It’s got such a great story,” Browning said, “and it seems like the community is proud of it and happy it was saved.”
A six-mile drive west from the store leads to an architectural wonder — the Tulip Trestle, or Bridge X75-6, or as it’s locally known, the Viaduct. It towers 157 feet into the air, where trains move across its 2,307 span. The steel-girded trestle is one of the world’s longest still in use, according to Greene County’s tourism website. Tulip Trestle was built in 1906.
Indeed, much of Greene County has stood the test of time. That longevity includes much of the region’s natural resources. Browning noticed its rural beauty on a trip to pick pumpkins with his family. The sun had just risen over the farm’s horizon.
“It looked like a postcard,” Browning said, “just perfect.”
Nature drives one of the county’s most popular attractions, the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area in Linton. Its 9,018 acres of prairie and marshes serves as a haven for more than 250 species of birds, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The community around it celebrates the wetlands — which the state purchased as a preserve in 2005 — each spring with the “Marsh Madness” festival organized by the nonprofit conservation group, Friends of Goose Pond.
Until the pandemic, that is. The event moved to a virtual format, but Browning still was able to visit the facility and see its amazing flocks of sandhill cranes, as well as nearly a dozen bald eagles. He also interviewed birding expert David Rupp. “This guy has an encyclopedic knowledge of birds,” Browning said.
Browning’s expertise comes in visual communications and filmmaking. He’s done television commercials, post-production work in films and the national PBS series “Independent Lens.” A job offer for his wife at Indiana University led their family to move to the Hoosier state from northern California. Once here, Browning connected with Bloomington PBS station WTIU and its “Spirit of” series, which has also highlighted Monroe, Orange, Brown and Johnson counties. “It was just kind of a natural fit,” Browning said.
Among the other subjects Browning fit into “Spirit of Greene County” are Shakamak State Park near Jasonville, Shawnee Theatre and Feed Store Beer Company in Bloomfield, Wagler Motorsports Park in Lyons, and the Linton Freedom Festival, the state’s largest Fourth of July parade — the first subject Browning and his crew documented during the summer of 2019.
Through the interruptions and health restrictions, Browning encountered lots of hospitality and traditions. One commonality tied all of the topics together, the setting.
“I really was surprised at just how beautiful the countryside was,” he said.
And it’s just down the road.
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