Indiana Dunes National Park
On our cross-country family road trip in 1995, we stopped at the Indiana Dunes National Park.
The massive sand dunes stretch along the southern shore of Lake Michigan and they are interwoven with wetlands and beaches. The dunes were formed over thousands of years as glaciers retreated in the wind and water shaped the sand into ridges and peaks.
Within this relatively small area, hundreds of plant species and multiple ecosystems exist. For a long time, researchers have understood that this landscape was both rare and fragile. It was in 1966, after much advocacy, the dunes were designated a National Lakeshore. This legislature was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 2019, the site was redesignated as Indiana Dunes National Park to further protect and preserve this landscape.
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