Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Totally Explained

Everything about Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore totally explained

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is a U.S. national lakeshore located in northwest Indiana that was authorized by Congress in 1966. The national lakeshore runs for nearly 25 miles (40 km) along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, from Gary, Indiana on the west to Michigan City, Indiana on the east. The park contains approximately 15,000 acres (61 km²). The National Lakeshore has development rights over the area within its boundaries, but hasn't purchased the full extent of the property. Its holdings are non-contiguous and don't include the Indiana Dunes State Park (1916), a separate, 2,182 acre (9 km²) parcel of protected dune land on the lakefront near Chesterton, Indiana.

Lakeshore activities

The park contains 15 miles (24 km) of beaches, as well as sand dunes, bogs, marshes, swamps, fens, prairies, rivers, oak savannas, and woodland forests. The park is also noted for its singing sands. More than 350 species of birds have been observed in the park. It has one of the most diverse plant communities of any unit in the U.S. National Park System with 1418 vascular plant species including 90 threatened or endangered ones. The Indiana Dunes area is unique in that it contains both Arctic and boreal plants (such as the bearberry) alongside desert plants (such as the prickly pear cactus).
   First-time visitors to the Lakeshore often go to the Dorothy Buell Memorial Visitor Center at U.S. Highway 20 and Indiana Route 49, near Porter, Indiana. This brand-new center (2007) offers standard visitor-center amenities, including a video, brochures, hands-on exhibits, and a gift shop. It is free to the general public.
   Camping is available at the Dunewood Campground on U.S. Highway 12 and Broadway, in Beverly Shores, Indiana. The campground includes an RV dump station and two loops of trailer accessible sites (some with pull-through drives). All sites have grills, a picnic table, and access to restrooms with running water and showers. There are a limited number of walk-in sites in the Douglas Loop.
   The park provides opportunities for bird watching, camping, 45 miles (72 km) of hiking, fishing, swimming, horseback riding, and cross-country skiing. Cycling is available on the Calumet Trail, a crushed limestone multiuse trail which runs through the eastern section of the park, providing access to the Indiana Dunes State Park, as well as to the communities of Beverly Shores, Indiana; the Town of Pines, Indiana; and Mount Baldy (Sand Dune) on the edge of Michigan City, Indiana. The park had more than 2 million visits in 2005.
   Rules state not to feed any of the wildlife, including seagulls, deer, or raccoons.

Wildlife

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is full of wildlife, including whitetail deer, red fox, raccoons, oppossums, cottontail rabbits, Canada geese, seagulls, squirrels, hawks, turkey vultures, mallards, great blue herons, garter snakes, songbirds, and rodents.

Lakeshore history

Early 1900s

The Indiana Dunes area first came to prominence in 1899 when Henry Chandler Cowles did some of the pioneering work in American plant ecology there. Despite attempts to protect the area from threats such as the nearby Gary steel mills led by groups such as the Prairie Club of Chicago, the area continued to be exploited. The tallest dune in Indiana, the 200 foot (60 m) high Hoosier Slide, was hauled away and turned into glass by Pittsburgh Plate Glass and canning jars by Ball Brothers.

Founding of State Park

In 1916 there was talk of making the site the "Sand Dunes National Park". Indiana State Park's founder Richard Lieber toured the site with then NPS Director Stephen Mather on October 31, 1916 to gauge its worthiness. In 1926, part of the area became the Indiana Dunes State Park. A few years after, the Indiana Dunes Bathhouse and Pavilion was erected just north of the park entrance. The bathhouse continues to be widely used today and remains in its original form.

Conflict with Industry

Significant political controversy arose in the 1950s and 1960s due to conflicts between industrial expansion and recreational use of the lakefront, and is noted in the administrative history of the National Lakeshore. One event heavily protested was the removal of a sand dune to provide landfill for the expansion of Northwestern University's Evanston, IL campus, . Bethlehem Steel was additionally granted permits to build a plant at Burns Harbor, IN, displacing dunes and wildlife. A harbor, Burns Harbor, was also proposed for the area.

Creation of the National Lakeshore

Citizens united to form the Save the Dunes Council and gained political support to protect the remaining lakeshore. In 1963, the Kennedy Compromise linked the construction of the Port of Indiana to the development of a National Lakeshore. The Lakeshore was created in 1966 and expanded in 1976, 1980, 1986 and 1992.

Lakeshore landmarks

Bailly-Chellberg Farm

The Bailly-Chellberg farmstead is located close to the geographic center of the National Lakeshore, at U.S. Highway 20 and Mineral Springs Road.

Bailly Homestead

This is the location of the pioneer trading post established in 1822 by fur trade pioneer Joseph Bailly. Bailly settled here and his last home, adapted from his 1830s retirement house, survives.

Chellburg Farm

The real estate became the home of the Chellberg family, who built a farm on its sandy soil. As of 2008, the Lakeshore maintains a heritage farm on the Chellberg land, with the Bailly family cemetery on the northern edge of the property.

Bailly Cemetery

The Bailly Cemetery is located half a mile north of the homestead. Its location is a sandy bluff, the once looked out across the dunes to Lake Michigan. Today, the forest covers the dunes and the lake is no visible. Numerous changes have occured since the first burial in 1827. Joseph Bailly buried his only son by Marie in the fall of 1827 on a sandy knoll. He erected a oak cross on the site and a 3-sided shelter. After 1866, the Bailly area was no longer the quiet place that it had been. Other families now lived in the area and some had been using the cemetery for their families. Late in 1866, Rose Howe (grand-daughter of Joseph Bailly) had the family plots fenced and requested that other remove their family to other cemeteries. In 1879 she'd the entire cemetery walled in and an iron gate installed to the north.
Finally in 1914, Rose Howe took one further step to protect the cemetery of her family. She had the area inside the wall filled with sand. Stone steps replaced the gate to a contemplative walk atop the cemetery. An oaken cross was raised atop this new ground, continuing the tradition started by her grand-father. Rose Howe died in 1916, while in California. She was returned to Indiana in 1917 and was the last burial in the family cemetery.

Cowles Bog

Cowles Bog, a National Natural Landmark, is a fen wetland named in honor of biologist and ecologist Henry Cowles. Located south and west of Dune Acres, Indiana, Cowles Bog is the sole remaining remnant of the Central Dunes where Cowles performed his pioneering field studies of plant succession and species diversity. A National Lakeshore trail runs from Mineral Springs Road into Cowles Bog.

Hoosier Prairie

Hoosier Prairie, a National Natural Landmark, is a 430-acre (1.7 km²) tallgrass prairie adjacent to Griffith, Indiana. It is a geographically isolated unit of the Lakeshore, owned and maintained by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources as a state nature preserve. 574 separate species of plants have been observed growing in this patch of prairie, or more than 1 species per acre.

Mount Baldy

Mount Baldy is a sand dune located west of Michigan City, Indiana. At 123 feet tall, it's one of the tallest sand dunes on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. It is a wandering dune that moves an average of 4 feet every year, and so is called a "living dune." Mount Baldy is accessible from U.S. Route 12 (also known as Dunes Highway) between the town of Pines and the western border of Michigan City. Visitors can hike 0.7 miles up the dune and from the top, on a clear day, can view Chicago's skyline and the south shore. North of Mount Baldy is a swimming beach. As of early 2007 the dune hike to the summit is closed due to erosion of the dune, however a new trail through the forest will still take you to the summit.

Pinhook Bog

Pinhook Bog, a National Natural Landmark, is a geographically isolated unit of the National Lakeshore. The quaking peat bog is located near U.S. Highway 421 approximately 9 miles (14 km) south of Michigan City. The bog formed from a postglacial kettle moraine left behind about 14,000 years before the present by the melting of the ice sheet during the end of the Wisconsin glaciation. The acidic bog is noted for pitcher plants and other wetland species. Access to the bog is restricted to ranger-led guided tours.

West Beach

West Beach, located adjacent to U.S. Highway 12 in Portage, Indiana, is a geographically separated section of the Lakeshore that's preserved as a piece of public beach access and an example of the same theme of plant succession as is found in Cowles Bog. This section of the Lakeshore displays most of the successive stages of Indiana Dunes biotic progression, from open beach sands to mature black oak forest. A new (2007) West Beach Succession Trail (0.7 miles (1.1 km) in length) features different stages of plant succession in the beach and inland dunes.

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