Indiana Dunes Is America's Newest National Park

Each year, more than 3.5 million people make their way to Indiana Dunes, a sandy, hilly stretch of land along the shores of Lake Michigan, some 80 kilometers southeast of Chicago, Illinois.

Visitors come to swim and sail on the lake, to watch birds in the wetlands, and to study the plant life of its oak and maple forests.

In February, the 6,000-hectare site became Indiana Dunes National Park, making it the newest national park in the United States.

Among the first to visit the new park were Bill and Betty Smith, who had traveled from Connecticut to Indiana. By their own account, they had already visited every one of the country's 60 other national parks.

Bill Smith said he was excited to see the sand dunes for himself and hoped to explore some of the park's 80 kilometers of hiking paths. Of America's 61st national park, he said simply, "I just want to get a sense of the place."

The dunes were created over time by strong winds blowing off Lake Michigan, one of the five so-called Great Lakes, and some are still taking shape today. The winds build them by depositing loose sand onto the land. While some of the dunes are partly rounded, others stretch out into long, narrow hills.

When people walk across the smooth sands of the dunes and lakeshore, the sand produces an almost musical sound, which can sometimes be heard several meters away. Visitors like to say that the dunes "sing."

Winning national park status for Indiana Dunes was a long and difficult struggle. The park's superintendent, Paul Labovitz, described the process as "103 years in the making."

The idea was first put forward in 1916, the same year the National Park Service was founded. However, World War I, and the steel mills built along the lakefront to support the war effort, put the plans on hold. Later attempts were halted by the industrial development of the nearby Port of Indiana, the largest commercial port on Lake Michigan. More recently, Indiana lawmakers brought the proposal before Congress in both 2017 and 2018, but no action was taken.

In the end, according to Lorelei Weimer, the park's director of tourism, it took the longest government shutdown in American history to bring about change. Under pressure to pass a funding bill so that the government could reopen, U.S. lawmakers moved quickly, and in January one Indiana congressman managed to include the measure in the new legislation.

"The fact that (the Indiana lawmaker) was able to get it into the budget bill was a huge win for us," Weimer said. The designation took her and many others by surprise. "None of us knew that was going to happen," she admitted.

The new status brings no new rules and no major financial changes. What it does bring is recognition: Indiana Dunes now stands alongside better-known national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. The National Park Service system includes more than 400 parks, monuments, historic sites and other protected areas, and for many years Indiana Dunes was part of it as a national lakeshore.

Superintendent Labovitz described the park as one of the most ecologically diverse places in North America, home to some 1,500 different kinds of plants.

The dunes also lie along a major migration route, and birdwatching is one of the main attractions. More than 300 species of birds live in the area, from waterbirds such as loons and herons to birds of prey like bald eagles and hawks, as well as several species of songbirds.

According to Weimer, the park attracts visitors from about 50 countries every year and offers guidebooks in 12 languages. "This is not just a local attraction," she said. "It's an international attraction."