Marquette Park (Gary)

Marquette Park, originally called Lake Front Park, is a municipal park completely surrounded by the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Its primary elements include 1.4 miles (2.2 km) of white sand Lake Michigan beaches, inland ponds, impressively high sand dunes, wetlands, a lagoon, and indigenous oak savanna. The park is located within the Miller Beach community. Miller Beach was once an independent municipality. However, in 1918 shortly before the establishment of Marquette Park, the Town of Miller was forcibly annexed into the municipal boundaries of Gary, Indiana. The park includes the Octave Chanute museum, registered as a National Landmark of Soaring.

The area now making up Marquette Park has a storied past. Before white settlement the area was populated by Miami Indians. 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. The Miami Indians were driven from the area during the Iroquois Wars of the second half of the 17th century. The Potawatomi Indians then moved into the Miller Beach region from the north.

The famous explorer Father "Pere" Marquette passed through Miller Beach while returning from his second exploration of the water passage from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. In 1673 he and Louis Joliet had ventured through Wisconsin and down the Mississippi, returning to Sault Ste Marie via the Illinois and Chicago Rivers. The next year Marquette ventured down Lake Michigan to the Chicago River and the portage to the Illinois, entering the Mississippi in the spring of 1675. Marquette was sick, however, and returning that spring he passed along the shores of Miller Beach close to death. He died only days later at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River in Michigan.

Before the creation of the Marquette Park Lagoon, this future park location was the site of the mouth of the Grand Calumet River. Joseph Bailly, an early settler in the region, laid out a town to be developed at this location. Dubbed Indiana City, it remained on the maps for many years, but never had more than a few shacks on it. During the Antebellum period the area that was to become the town of Miller became an essential part of the Underground Railroad. The Miller dunes and swamp areas, now part of Marquette Park, served as a haven for runaway slaves.

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Wikipedia