The Best Things to do in Evansville, Indiana

Evansville, Indiana probably isn’t on the top of your bucket list. You may not even know this small city exists! However, you may find yourself driving through this part of the United States on a road trip. Indiana isn’t nicknamed “The Crossroads of America” for no reason! Evansville is a wonderful city to stop and recharge during a long road trip. Here are the best things to do in Evansville, Indiana!

Map courtesy of Wanderlog, a trip planner

Visit Mesker Park Zoo

A komodo dragon relaxing in its large habitat at Evansville’s Mesker Park Zoo

Mesker Park Zoo is a major point of interest in Evansville. The historic, AZA-accredited zoo is quickly growing and changing to become an incredibly ethical zoo to visit, especially in the midwest. Mesker Park Zoo is home to hundreds of animals on a sprawling 45-acre park complete with botanical gardens, natural wetlands, and a large duck pond. It’s a very relaxing place to visit!

Mesker Park Zoo is not a huge zoo, so it makes a great place to visit when you just need to stretch your legs for a while. Perfect for a road trip stop!

Eat your Fill at the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival

If you are traveling through the first full week of October, you HAVE to stop at Evansville’s Fall Festival. I’d actually add it as a stop on your trip if you can! It’s definitely THE best thing to do in Evansville, Indiana if you can catch it.

Attending the Fall Festival with my younger sister

The West Side Nut Club Fall Festival is the second-largest street fair in the United States. Pretty good for a small midwestern city! There are dozens of carnival rides and games, but the best part of this fair is the food. There are so many food booths that they give out an actual map so you can find your way around! In 2019, there were 136 food booths run by charities, nonprofits, and local schools around the Evansville area. You can find everything from deep-fried candy bars, freshly grilled vegetables, and the Evansville-famous brain sandwich. It’s an event I try to make every year!

Play at the Evansville Children’s Museum

One thing Indiana does right is a good interactive children’s museum. While the largest US children’s museum is in Indianapolis, Evansville’s is definitely a great one. It’s catered to children up to age 12, but anyone is welcome to visit! Here are their exhibits:

Live Well – learn about health literacy and wellness
Quack Factory – learn about how water works and play and climb Moe the 20-foot duck!
Speak Loud – act out a play and watch it on tv, create stop-motion animation films, and experiment with other noisy, hands-on activities
Work Smart – see how things work by building and creating paper airplanes, a ball-bearing coaster, and other hands-on activities
Art Maker Studio – build and create to solve problems and learn about the importance of trial-and-error
Kids World – learn about Evansville’s 3 sister cities: Tochigi-shi, Japan; Osnabrük, Germany; and Tizimin, Mexico
A Traveling/Seasonal exhibit – these are always changing and very fun!

If you’re traveling through the city with kids, the children’s museum would be one of the best things to do in Evansville, Indiana to give them a break!

Explore Angel Mounds

Growing up in Evansville, Angel Mounds was one of my favorite places to go. Angel Mounds is one of the country’s best-preserved, pre-contact Native American sites. It’s a great way to learn something new and stretch your legs on their sprawling grounds! It’s also a very affordable place to visit.

Angel Mounds was built around 1000 and 1450 A.D. and was once home to over 1,000 Mississippian Native Americans. Mississippians created elevated mounds from the earth to elevate important buildings. It was the location of several important religious and trade sites for tribes within 75 miles of the area!

The historic site has a very informative museum, great for kids and adults, as well as grounds you can explore and original earth mounds. The site also holds many events throughout the year with local Native groups you may be lucky enough to see!

Learn at the Evansville Museum of Arts, History, and Science

I loved this museum growing up! The museum is full of changing exhibits focused on art, history, and science. Their rotating art exhibits are wonderful, however, the science exhibits were always my favorite.

Recently, the Evansville Museum has had a number of COVID-19 related exhibits, explaining everything from how the virus works, how it is transferred, what happens to used PPE, and more. My most memorable science exhibit I experienced at the museum was a True Crime Forensics Lab when I was in grade school. I was able to do hands-on activities such as testing blood type, matching shoe prints, and learning about forensic sciences to solve a murder mystery. So fun!

Get Spooked at the Willard Library

The Willard Library is a notoriously haunted destination in Evansville. While the building still functions as a regular library, it has been featured on multiple ghost hunting shows. Locals will SWEAR to you they’ve seen or felt The Grey Lady while at the library.

Evansville’s Willard Library – photo by The Ghost Diaries

The building is a historic, gothic home that was donated to the city as a library in 1881 and even served as a stop in the Underground Railroad. It was also one of the first free public libraries in the country, and a rarity in this part of the country. However, most people now visit the library to learn about The Grey Lady.

The ghost was first reported to be seen in 1930 by a custodian and has been sighted by multiple library employees and visitors throughout the years. In addition, strange occurrences seem to happen in the library including water turning on or off by itself, a random smell of perfume, items being moved around the library, and odd items being found around the building. I even visited the library on a school field trip in kindergarten not knowing it was reportedly haunted, and told my parents I was frightened of the building!

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, it’s a fun story for locals to share. You can check out Willard’s ghost cams here! Either way, visiting the library is one of the best things to do in Evansville, Indiana.

Other Evansville Destinations

Although I have not personally visited them, Evansville also has quite a few museums catered more for adults and older children, such as the Evansville Wartime Museum, Evansville African American Museum, and the USS LST Ship Memorial. Evansville also has a growing craft brewery culture which can be fun to explore!