Indiana Dunes National Park

How to Get There

From Portage, IN (4 mi): Take US-20 east to IN-49, then head south on IN-49 to the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center at 1215 IN-49 in Porter, the primary gateway to Indiana Dunes National Park.

Overview

Indiana Dunes National Park stretches for about 20 miles along the southern shore of Lake Michigan in northwestern Indiana. Authorized as a national lakeshore in 1966, it became the nation's 61st national park in 2019, protecting a rare mix of beaches, sand dunes, wetlands, prairies, and woodlands squeezed between the Chicago and Gary industrial corridors.

Natural Areas

The park's patchwork of natural areas includes Cowles Bog, where pioneering ecologist Henry Chandler Cowles studied plant succession; the restored wetlands of the Great Marsh; the tallgrass Hoosier Prairie; and the quaking peat of Pinhook Bog, home to carnivorous pitcher plants. Along the lakeshore, Mount Baldy, a "living dune" that migrates a few feet each year, is one of the tallest dunes on Lake Michigan's southern shore. The park is also remarkably diverse, with more than 1,400 plant species and 350 bird species recorded, including both Arctic and desert plants growing side by side.

Historic Areas

Historic sites include the 1822 Bailly Homestead fur-trading post, the neighboring Chellberg Farm and Bailly Cemetery, and the Century of Progress Architectural District, five experimental homes relocated from Chicago's 1933 World's Fair.

Recreation

The park offers 15 miles of beaches and 45 miles of hiking trails, along with camping, fishing, horseback riding, and cycling on the Calumet Trail. The Dorothy Buell Memorial Visitor Center near Porter is the best starting point for first-time visitors.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Indiana Dunes National Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0