Shades State Park is a state park in Montgomery, Parke, and Fountain counties in Indiana, United States. It is located west-northwest of Indianapolis. In 2024–2025, Shades received an estimated 125,000 visitors.
History In the last decades of the 19th century, the area was a resort with a forty-room inn. In the 1930s, Joseph Frisz acquired the land in order to protect it. His heirs sold the land in 1947 to the holding company Save the Shades, which in turn gave it to the state to create Indiana's 15th state park.
Originally, the area was known as the "Shades of Death". The original of the name is uncertain. Some say it was due to the way the trees cast their shadow on the ground below, making it look like a black forest. Others say it was because of a settler's death, although details are unclear and contradictory.
Features Steep sandstone cliffs within the park were formed when Indiana was covered by ocean hundreds of millions of years ago. Fossils can be found on the nearby sandbars.
Sugar Creek, which runs through the park, is too unsafe for swimming, but canoeing is available. Sugar Creek also runs through Turkey Run State Park, which is about to the southwest. The two parks share similar features including steep ravines, slate and sandstone valleys, and small waterfalls.
The Silver Cascade waterfall is small, but unique, in that it is a convex waterfall. An excellent view of it and nearby Sugar Creek can be had from Lover's Leap, a small observation deck built out over the cliff.
Indiana State Road 234 crosses the property, designating the boundary between the state park and Pine Hills Nature Preserve.
Shades is also notable for previously having a small airfield called Roscoe Turner Flight Strip (FAA: 8I2), where visitors once could land their plane and then visit the park. It was long and wide. The airfield was shut down sometime between 1998 and 2003. In 2010, Shades Airport Road was built over the old runway.
Pine Hills Nature Preserve
Located in the eastern end of the state park, the Pine Hills Nature Preserve protects the deep canyons formed by Indian Creek before it enters Sugar Creek. The primary feature in the preserve is the "Devil's Backbone," a 100-foot-high stone ridge barely wide enough for the trail to cross. The preserve was the first dedicated nature preserve in Indiana, and was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1968 under the name "Pine Hills Natural Area."
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References
My Indiana: 101 Places to See, by Earl L. Conn (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2006). pg.126-7.
External links Shades State Park