Indiana Dunes National Park United States

Legendary

This lake front park protects the dune ridges along Lake Michigan.

Photo by U.S. Department of the Interior

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In 1837, a town called City West was built on this shoreline with one goal: to beat Chicago. Investors laid out twenty-five blocks, built about forty homes, a sawmill, and a pier.

Chicago at the time had roughly 200 residents. City West's founders liked their odds.

Then a financial panic swept the country and the investors' money vanished. By 1839 the town was empty, and a forest fire burned the last of it down around 1853.

Sand covered what was left. Chicago went on to become America's third-largest city.

People lived here long before that. Archaeologists have documented five groups of mounds in the dunes area, built by the Hopewell culture between roughly 200 BC and 800 AD.

The local branch is called the Goodall Focus. Those mounds mark some of the earliest permanent settlements anywhere in the region.

The park hugs 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in northwestern Indiana. Behind the beaches sit dunes, marshes, prairies, bogs, and forests packed close together.

That mix makes it one of the most biodiverse places in the country. More than 350 bird species have been recorded here.

The most famous dune is Mount Baldy, which stands 126 feet tall and moves. Wind pushes it inland about five to ten feet a year, earning it the nickname "living dune."

It's shifted roughly a quarter mile from the shore over the past century. Climbing it is restricted now, since visitors wore away the grass holding it in place.

Congress protected the area as a national lakeshore in 1966. It became the country's 61st national park on February 15, 2019.

Hike the Three Dune Challenge, climbing the park's three tallest dunes in a row. Join a ranger-led hike to the summit of Mount Baldy, the only way up. Walk out to Waverly Beach, where City West once stood, and look for the creek the town was built beside.