Marquette Park (Gary)

Its primary features include 1.4 miles (2.2 km) of Lake Michigan beaches, inland ponds, sand dunes, wetlands, a lagoon, and indigenous oak savanna.

The entire southernmost edge of Lake Michigan, including Miller Beach, had sandy soil unsuitable for raising crops.

However, the land was teeming with wildlife and fish, making the area popular for hunting, trapping and gathering berries.

In 1673 he and Louis Joliet ventured through Wisconsin and down the Mississippi, returning to Sault Ste Marie via the Illinois and Chicago Rivers.

The next year Marquette traveled down Lake Michigan to the Chicago River and the portage to the Illinois, entering the Mississippi in the spring of 1675.

The Miller dunes and swamp areas, now part of Marquette Park, served as a haven for runaway slaves.

Until 1874, the parcel that is now Marquette Park was a relatively anonymous patch of dunes waterfront at what was then the mouth of the Grand Calumet River.

[2] During the Carr period, the dunes became the site of key hang gliding experiments carried out in 1896-1897 by a team led by pioneering aeronaut Octave Chanute.

This illegal land seizure was a focal point in the controversy surrounding the forced annexation of the town of Miller by the city of Gary.

No longer a place to change or shower, the building has been restored as a museum honoring Octave Chanute, the father of flight.

Builders demolished the former bathhouse east showers in spring 1998 to commence the construction of the new Tuskegee Airmen Wing in January 1999.