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Indiana Dunes National Park
Lake Michigan dunes, bogs and prairies between Chicago and steel mills
Between the steel mills of northwest Indiana and the suburbs of Chicago, 15 miles (24 km) of Lake Michigan shoreline hold one of the richest patchworks of habitat in the Midwest. Beaches give way to dunes, oak savanna, prairie, swamp and bog, and the park shelters about 1,100 native plant species, where Arctic bearberry grows near prickly pear cactus. It was here, around 1899, that University of Chicago botanist Henry Chandler Cowles studied how plant communities change as dunes age, helping found the science of ecological succession.
Mount Baldy, a 123-foot (37 m) living dune at the park's east end, migrates inland about 4 feet (1.2 m) a year. Pinhook Bog, a quaking peat mat in a glacial kettle, holds pitcher plants and is open only on ranger tours. The Potawatomi lived along these shores, and Joseph Bailly's 1822 trading post survives as a National Historic Landmark. After decades of advocacy by the Save the Dunes Council and Dorothy Buell, Congress created Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966. It became the country's 61st national park on February 15, 2019, the first in Indiana.