Mill Race Park in Columbus, Indiana, offers a mix of riverfront scenery and unexpected botanical surprises.

On a visit earlier this year, I noticed a stand of conifers that reminded me of the tamaracks I had known in New York—trees whose soft needles flare into a vivid yellow each November before falling. Their presence here, far from their usual northern range, feels unusual enough to make you pause.

When I returned in November while photographing several historic bridges in the county, I was struck by how vibrant those trees had become. Their needles glowed a deep orange, a sign of mild stress from an earlier drought, yet the color was still remarkable against the cool tones of late autumn. Set beside the park’s ponds, trails, and historic covered bridge, these tamarack-like conifers offer an unexpected splash of seasonal color in a landscape shaped by water, history, and thoughtful design.

The history of Mill Race Park gives this landscape a deeper resonance. The park sits at the confluence of the Flat Rock and Driftwood rivers, on land once known as “Death Valley” for its poverty, substandard housing, and chronic flooding. After the city began acquiring the area in 1963, the site underwent a long transformation that culminated in a 1990s redesign by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, who shaped a resilient floodplain park of elevated structures, concrete paths, lakes, looping drives, and an 84-foot observation tower. At its center stands the Brownsville Covered Bridge, originally built in the 1830s using Stephen H. Long’s pioneering wooden truss design and reassembled here after the 1985 arson that destroyed the park’s earlier bridge.

Today, the bridge, pond, and river trails form the heart of a landscape that has evolved from flood-scarred ground into one of Columbus’s most welcoming public spaces.