French Lick, INDIANA — Some 100 ago, this little town, nestled in the hilly forests of southern Indiana, was well-known to most people with means. Folks would flock here by train to drink its medicinal waters, gamble illicitly at its supper clubs, and revel in fine food and lodging. The wildly-embraced, new beverage “tomato juice” was created in French Lick in 1917 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his candidacy here in 1932.

Today, the 3,200-acre French Lick Resort features two luxury hotels with 750 plus combined rooms, three golf courses, two spas, three swimming pools, a 24/7 nonsmoking casino, shops, stables and more. The frilly fun is a 54-mile drive from the Louisville, Kentucky, airport.

Founded in 1857, the town of French Lick originally was a French trading post built near a spring and salt lick, where hunted bison once lapped up lithium-laced waters that entrepreneurs bottled before the chemical element was deemed a controlled substance.

Visitors can learn all this and more at the French Lick West Baden Museum, where budding curator Kenton Allbright, 19, passionately espouses on the hometown he shares with basketball great Larry Bird. Bird’s modest childhood home, with its basketball goal out front, can be seen near the stately, still-standing limestone Monon Railroad depot from which scenic 25-mile train rides regularly depart.

Among its many artifacts, the museum showcases an old steam train whistle and other Monon paraphernalia. A main attraction is a scale model of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, whose employees once wintered in French Lick.

The West Baden Springs Hotel — boasting opulent gold overlays, stained glass windows and marble tile — is a historical gem in itself. Built in the late 1880s, the hotel burned in 1901 and, miraculously, was rebuilt in a year’s time with a steel dome; the very same that today caps a magnificent rotunda encircled by balconied rooms. In past lives, the hotel served as a WWI Army hospital, Jesuit seminary and private university/technical school for which hotel historian Jeff Lane’s brother played baseball. Go, Blue Devils!

Other sites in southern Indiana well worth visiting include: