History of the Indiana Dunes
The southern lakes area was a rich hunting ground and there is little evidence of permanent communities forming during the earlier years.
Entire populations began moving westward, while others sought to dominate large geographic trading areas.
Today, the entire coast line has been settled and filled with homes, factories, businesses and public parks.
Early man entered the area south of Lake Michigan after the glaciers retreated around 15,000 years ago.
Included are Early Archaic Lecroy or Kanawha bifurcate-stemmed point (7800 and 5800 BC), Greenville Creek side notched.
By the 15th century CE, the communities of Native American surrounding the southern shores of Lake Michigan were of the Huber-Berrien group.
[10] Most of the Iroquois War is taken from the French records in Canada, leaving little details on activities further west and south of the lakes.
[9] On the far eastern edge of the dunes, the Miami and Mascouten had returned to the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan sometime after 1673.
The primary road continued to follow the Sauk Trail across Indiana through Porter and Lake Counties to Illinois.
The other option was to go northwest to Trail Creek and follow the lake shore the last 60 miles (97 km) to Fort Dearborn.
[14] See also Octave Chanute organized the International Conference on Aerial Navigation in 1893, during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
From there, in conjunction with his contacts in Europe, he joined with younger experimenters, including Augustus Herring and William Avery.
These experiments convinced Chanute and his partners that the way to achieve the extra lift needed without a lot of weight was to place stack several wings one above the other.
[17] In 1874, Robert and Druisilla Carr settled on 200 acres (81 ha) of land at the mouth of the Calumet River.
During this period, the dunes became the site of hang gliding experiments carried out in 1896–1897 by aeronaut Octave Chanute.
Although the Carrs had lived on the land for years, United States Steel Corporation claimed ownership in 1919.
After years of negotiations, U.S.Steel and the estate of the Carrs agreed to the donation of the land to the City of Gary for a park.
In June 1954, the Army Corps of Engineers purchased a vacant site, east of Ogden Dunes.
As the most easterly facility in the 15-unit Chicago-Milwaukee Defense system, it was designed for the protection of the Gary industrial district from attack from enemy bombers.
Three key individuals helped make Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore a reality: Henry Cowles, a botanist from the University of Chicago; Paul H. Douglas, U.S. senator for the State of Illinois; and Dorothy R. Buell, an Ogden Dunes resident and English teacher.
Henry Cowles published an article entitled "Ecological Relations of the Vegetation on Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan" in the Botanical Gazette in 1899 that established Cowles as the "father of plant ecology" in North America and brought international attention to the intricate ecosystems existing on the dunes.
[23] But Cowles' article and the new international awareness were not enough to curtail the struggle between industry and preservation that governed the development of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
[23] It was this kind of activity by local industry that spurred Cowles, along with Thomas W. Allinson and Jens Jensen, to form the Prairie Club of Chicago in 1908.
The Prairie Club was the first group to propose that a portion of the Indiana Dunes be protected from commercial interests and maintained in its pristine condition for the enjoyment of the people.
A union of politicians and businessmen desired to maximize economic development by obtaining federal funds to construct a Port of Indiana.
Hoosier politicians and businessmen were eager to exploit the economic prosperity promised by linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes via the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Then President John F. Kennedy supported congressional authorization for Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, which marked the first time federal monies would be used to purchase natural parkland.
[23] The Kennedy Compromise entailed the creation of a national lakeshore and a port to satisfy industrial needs.
[23] By the time the 89th Congress adjourned in late 1966, the bill had passed and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore finally became a reality.
While the 1966 authorizing legislation included only 8,330 acres (33.7 km2) of land and water, the Save the Dunes Council, National Park Service, and others continued to seek expansion of the boundaries of preservation.
