Indiana Dunes National Park contains more than a few surprises, including this view of Lake Michigan from Cowles Bog/David Kroese

Editor's note: David Kroese is one of the few who have visited all 419 units of the National Park System. Indiana Dunes is one of parks he keeps returning to.

The engine growls and gears grind as the yellow school bus lurches ahead. The hard, dark green, vinyl bench seat accentuates the jolt. Memories of a childhood decades removed flash through my mind. I feel a surge of youthful energy as we begin a tour of the diverse and interesting architecture in and near Indiana Dunes National Park.

Our first stop on the Logs to Lustrons tour on this first Saturday of May is the Nelson Farmstead. The home’s core, a 19th century oak hall-and-parlor cabin expanded in five subsequent additions, displays its Nordic heritage. Most of the farm’s outbuildings date from 1904 to 1915, after Swedish immigrant Charles Johnson bought the property, beginning over a century of family occupancy. Johnson’s daughter Irene and her husband Oscar Nelson lived here until 2004.

After a docent reminder that we can rejoin the tour at our own pace on any one of the buses running at 15-minute intervals, I step off and stride up the short gravel drive to a familiar face.

“It’s you!” Ranger Kelly offers on approach. Her warm smile from beneath her USNPS flat hat and straight brown bangs falling midway down her forehead add to a recalcitrant sun’s glow in this cool, wet spring.

“And it’s you,” I reply, hands on hips, feigning disappointment. “I’m the National Park Service’s bad penny. I keep turning up.”

Kelly shakes her head. She hosted me when I spoke at the park a year ago, sharing the story of how I came to visit all 400+ plus NPS locations and put the adventure in writing.

“I’m here to learn. Tell me everything you know. Go!” I demand.

“Well that won’t take long. About what, exactly?” Kelly asks.

“Indiana Dunes eludes me. I can’t get to the center of the lollipop. Each time I explore something in this park, I learn of something I missed. That’s why I’m here today,” I say, glancing at the yellow-sided house with a covered front porch and matching covered side entry. I’m Tantalus, surging from the water for the park’s grapes, only to have them pulled away. After a dozen visits, I’m still searching. “A few months ago, a volunteer at the visitor center mentioned this tour when I raved about enjoying the Century of Progress open house.”

In October 2015, I attended the annual open house offered by the park and residents of four of the five homes perched on Lake Michigan’s shoreline. Removed from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair’s “A Century of Progress” exhibit and hauled by barge across the lake, the structures landed in Beverly Shores, Indiana. Remarkable for their novel and futuristic designs, four houses stand renovated by residents with long-term leases willing to make the expensive and laborious investment. Only the House of Tomorrow, with its octagonal design and first-floor airplane hangar, awaits a knight in shining armor with a seven-figure hole in their pocket. Who wouldn’t have an airplane in their home by the 21st century?

“The story for this home strikes a similar chord. The current lessees have restored the house and workshop in their nine years on the property,” Kelly offers.

Walking through the home’s front parlor, it exudes a cozy, domesticated ambiance. Passing into the kitchen, the u-shaped marble countertop sports a tray of cookies and a jug of water with floating lemon slices. The room seems bigger than it is.

Resident Pat Shymanski stands against the wall in the small dining room with a circular table at its center as visitors mill about her personal space. “Thanks for inviting us into your home,” I say. She nods with a smile.

Our next tour stop is Baillytown, the largest 19th century Swedish settlement in Indiana. Ranger Penny greets us next to the repurposed, World War I era barn, now a preschool, on the farm Gust Lindstrom settled in 1870. Lindstrom built the original adjacent home with two rooms and a loft. His descendants expanded the house between 1900 and 1910 and continued farming activities until 1941. The present-day two-story home’s vernacular design emphasizes the domestic and functional. Loopholes cut into the original log structure, disguised from the exterior, identify its age.

Although not on today’s tour, the nearby Bailly Homestead is one of the area’s earliest settlements following Indiana’s 1816 statehood. Arriving in 1822 from Michigan, Joseph and Marie Bailly established their home in a northern Indiana wilderness controlled by the Potawatomi who traveled and traded along the Little Calumet River. The 500,000-acre Kankakee Marsh to the southeast impeded early development and travel from the east. The Potawatomi moved between summer wigwam villages along the river and smaller, winter family dwellings adjacent to the marsh. Joseph Bailly assisted in creating the 1833 Chicago Treaty with the Potawatomi which brought northern Indiana into the public domain. Bailly used the substantial remuneration for his role, $6,000, to build the main house standing on the property today.

The Bailly home at Indiana Dunes National Park/David Kroese

Bailly chose the riverside location for six small wooden structures that housed his family and trading post focused on beaver pelts brought by Potawatomi hunters and transferred to eastern markets. Two major trails, the Lake Shore Trail and Sauk Trail, pass nearby. The Lake Shore Trail followed the same path as the later Fort Dearborn (Chicago) to Detroit Road. The Sauk Trail ran from Detroit to the Mississippi River at Rock Island, passing south of modern-day Chicago near Cook County's present southern boundary. Though very little has survived to the present day, the Sauk Trail’s heavy use left sunken sections familiar to those who have explored extant segments of the original Natchez Trace. Both trails provided passage to freedom seekers escaping bondage via the underground railroad. Historians estimate 3,000 to 4,500 freedom seekers passed through the Chicago area from the 1820s through 1860, many of them using these centuries-old native commercial trails en route to free Canadian soil.

Our next tour stop is the Good Fellow Lodge. U.S. Steel engineers built the 63-acre camp, which operated between 1941 and 1976, to provide recreational opportunities to employees’ children. The company also used the Adirondack rustic-style lodge for meetings and banquets. The lodge and surrounding cabins hosted 60-100 children per week. A segregated summer schedule included six weeks for white children and two for minority children. Ten children, from eight to 15 years old, occupied each cabin for a one-week stay. Only partially obscured concrete pads remain from the cabins that once dotted the grounds.

Two sisters and former campers, Tish and Barb, greet us in the cavernous great hall and dining room. Their mother, Louise, joins us. She had six children attend the camp in the late '60s and early '70s. I make the mistake of sharing with Tish and Barb, “I’ve visited all the NPS units and am writing in more depth about the Midwest parks,” not realizing they require an unfortunate volunteer to demonstrate the fate of campers run afoul of camp rules.

Campers practiced a decorum instructed by the Goodfellow Core Values: sportsmanship, cooperation, democratic living, proper etiquette, outdoor appreciation, and contemporary social values. Campers received descriptively decorated wooden plates denoting awards for distinctions such as best sportsmanship, hardest worker, and best attitude.  

We shuffle across the oak floor to a lone picnic table. Exposed timber rafters span the room perpendicular to the wooden board ceiling running the hall’s long axis. Balcony walkways ring the hall on the north and west sides with a large stone fireplace built into the east end. I’m scribbling notes as Barb describes the punishment meted out for etiquette offenses.

Inside the Good Fellow Lodge/David Kroese

“Should someone be spotted with their elbows on the table, for example, they would be made to circle the table while other campers sang about their infraction,” says Barb.

Tish puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Sit down.”

“Me? What did I do?” I ask, my face flushed and hoping to receive a sympathetic reprieve that’s not coming.

“You are our volunteer,” Tish explains.

Directed to sit at the table, Barb and Tish demonstrate peer pressure in action by dancing about me while singing a ditty that goes,

“David, David, strong and able,

Get your elbows off the table!

This is not a horse’s stable,

But a first-class dining table!”

It reminds me of a Braves-Cardinals game I attended solo at Turner Field some years ago. They ended their fifth inning “kiss cam” with a close-up shot on the stadium’s videoboard of me, in a red Cardinals hat and jersey with empty seats on either side, switching from the love song to “I’m So Lonely” crooning over the PA.

After Tish and Barb finish their sing-along, I offer, “Thanks ladies. You really shouldn’t have.”

Back on the bus, we make our way past the 1885 brick Chellberg House and Farm, a living history farm typical of construction by early Swedish farmers. The volunteer aboard our bus extolls the park’s biodiversity, “Indiana Dunes National Park is home to more species of orchids than the state of Hawaii, and more bird species than Great Smoky Mountains National Park, over 350. There are places in the dunes where one can find an Arctic flower growing next to a species of cactus.”

In addition to carving the landscape, glacial advances transported multiple plant species to Lake Michigan’s southern shore, moving them a thousand miles or more from their native environment at a pace slow enough to allow hardier species to adjust. The most adaptive plants thrive within the park today.

At the Read Dunes House, we visit one of 1,100 homes within the park boundary purchased by the park service in the early '80s. Homeowners could stay for at least 20 years, with the homes transferring to the Park Service after their owner’s passing or relocation. Herb and Charlotte Read, who spent years advocating for the lakeshore's protection, built this one-story house in 1952 and lived here until 2010. Designed to accentuate views of the surrounding forested dunes, the great room covers 57 percent of the total floor space and features floor to ceiling windows on three sides. A rough-cut limestone fireplace centered in the room separates the great room and kitchen. Two small bedrooms and a tiny bathroom are located down a narrow hall at one end of the house.

The Schulhof Lustron home with its lake view/David Kroese

The tour’s conclusion features an architectural curiosity, the Lustron homes. From 1948 to 1950, the Lustron Corporation built 2,498 prefabricated, enameled steel homes intended to relieve the post-war housing shortage. All three commercial Lustron models came in two or three-bedroom floor plans, the most common being the Westchester Deluxe. Despite generous financial backing, including receiving the first venture capital loan made by the federal government, Lustron ceased production on June 6, 1950.

Ranger Bill, who greets us at the Schulhof Lustron, shares, “Production in the Columbus, Ohio factory peaked at 26 homes a week. The company estimated a breakeven production rate at 50 homes each week and planned a rate ten times greater.” Each home had over 3,000 parts shipped for on-site assembly. Beach erosion forced relocation of the Schulhof home to the south side of Lake Front Drive. Currently vacant and in need of restoration, the dove grey Westchester Deluxe home is one of fewer than 200 three-bedroom Lustron homes ever built.

At the Dr. John and Gerda Meyer House next door, the Harold Olin-designed international style home’s open floor plan includes floor to ceiling windows in the common dining and living rooms facing the lake. Built in 1961 with a 1965 addition, the smaller lower level built into the dune ridge contains utilities, a bedroom and a full kitchen. In addition to the common areas, the upper, main level, has a smaller kitchen and a uniquely designed master bedroom with nested, pullout storage space. Consistent with the style, the master bathroom sports a bidet.

The Snell family, lessees of the two-bedroom Westchester model Jacob Lustron home, moved it to its current location near the east end of Lake Front Drive from its original location in an endangered habitat before reconstructing and restoring the structure. Gary and Linda Snell occupy the home during the summer months. Outside the home, Ranger Cliff shares, “A crew would erect a home in four days. The homes sold for about $9,000 during the company’s first year but increased to $10,500 by 1950. Delivery and construction cost could nearly double the finished cost. The company lost money on each home sold and had unfilled orders for 8,000 more.”

I offer, “A wise businessman once told me, ‘When you lose money per unit, it’s tough to make it up on volume.’” Ranger Cliff nods at my financial acumen.

The Snells have restored most of the home’s original design features, including the metal cabinetry and space efficiency components like pocket doors. Items are hung or secured to interior walls with magnets. It’s obvious the Snells have made a remarkable commitment in time and expense to restore the home to its current condition.

I comment to Gary, “Seems like it would be impossible to heat this metal home in cold weather.”

Gary replies, “It’s impractical to live here year-round. We shut the house up in the Fall and return to our home in Valparaiso.”

On the adjacent property nearer the lake, the Solomon Enclave is today’s final stop. Known mostly for his work on apartment buildings, Chicago architect Louis Solomon erected these three international-style homes in 1948. These houses are among the earliest modern designs in Beverly Shores. The two-level structures are built on an angled dune ridge, creating upper level access from the south, and lower level access from the north. Each level functions as a stand-alone residence. The upper residence, with its enclosed porch, balcony and floor to ceiling windows facing the lake, far outstrips the modest lower level. From the front, the lower level’s white brick facade with small rectangular windows share little similarity with the upper level beyond the box design. Both the international style designs appear as a box on top of a box. If you painted the siding white and the roof and foundation black, each would look like a giant, square, double-stuffed Oreo cookie. Nationwide, the international style never gained much appeal in residential construction.

Five distinct glacial advances sculpted this area, leaving behind landforms that include kettle lakes and moraines composed of sediment called glacial till; a mixture of clay, sand, gravel and boulders that provide direct evidence that ice covered Northwest Indiana. The glacier also carved the basin of Ancestral Lake Michigan. Over thousands of years since the glacier's demise, sand has been carried to the southern end of the basin, building the shoreline progressively northward to create miles of stabilized and forested inland dunes, lazy meandering waterways, and multiple wetland habitats. The complex terrain supports remarkable biodiversity and extends a considerable distance from the lake.

Pinhook Bog at Indiana Dunes National Park is a geologic relic/David Kroese

Dr. Erin Argyilan, a professor of geosciences at Indiana University Northwest who studies coastal processes and landscapes in her research shares, “We can actually trace coastal landforms throughout northwest Indiana. The building of the coastal landscape began as far south as the town of Griffith, Indiana, nearly eight miles from the present shoreline, where the train depot stands atop the sands of a large coastal feature called a spit.”

Having explored much of Indiana Dunes National Park’s 15 miles of shoreline, I return in July at the suggestion of Ranger Bill to explore Pinhook Bog. The kettle bog is one of two detached park areas south of the lakeshore, the other being Heron Rookery. Near the end of the Wisconsin Glacial epoch about 15,000 years ago, a piece of ice broke off as the glacier melted at the edges and was buried in glacial till. When it melted within the clay and gravel sediments it created a closed ecosystem supplied solely with rainwater and run-off from higher adjacent terrain. A mat of sphagnum moss, typically three to six feet thick, covers about a quarter of the bog’s 580 acres. A deep peat bed underlies the sphagnum mat after centuries of decay.

I’m joining a tour group of student interns from the Field Museum, being led by another student. The bog’s fragility requires it only be accessible via a quarter-mile floating boardwalk during ranger-guided events. I join the group but stay ahead of them on the trail to a chain-linked fence and padlocked gate. After the leader opens the gate, we study the first two partially submerged sections of floating walkway. It appears there’s a leak in the pontoon at the end of the first section. The leader steps aside and I take a giant stride but can’t reach the far end of the second section. The boardwalk and my foot disappear in dark brown, acidic water.

A few quick steps, and hesitation among the young zebras crossing the Nile behind me, reestablish my lead, permitting pictures of this isolated wetland ecosystem filled with interesting flora. Numerous carnivorous species thrive here. Among them are the purple pitcher plant, the spoonleaf and round-leaved sundews, and the horned and hidden-fruited bladderworts. I pass several orchids, pink lady slippers and rose pogonias, and survey the tamaracks rising high above the bog in drier areas. Exiting the gated area, blueberry shrubs grow near the water’s edge.

Pinhook’s 1.7-mile Upland Trail navigates the scarred landscape of the terminal moraine, a different ecosystem than the bog. The trail winds through a shaded beech and maple forest with a small lake at its center, running up and down slopes and aside ten to 15-foot ravines. It’s hard to discern which topographical features are carved from glacial movement and which ones are remnants of glacial runoff. I leave both impressed and perplexed at the complex terrain.

The day ends with the Cowles Bog Trail, named after Dr. Henry Cowles. His ecological studies highlighted the area’s unique biological features and played a significant role in the ecosystem’s protection by the 1966 national lakeshore proclamation. A misnomer, Cowles Bog is a fen. Whereas a bog like Pinhook is a closed water system, Cowles Bog drains to Lake Michigan via a tributary of Dunes Creek. The multiple habitats of this wetland complex include marsh, fen, swamp, pond, and wet meadow.

Cowles Bog and Lake Michigan/David Kroese

I begin from the trail parking area by going the wrong way, annoying a flock of wild turkeys foraging near the trail. I cover a quarter mile away from the bog before realizing the error. Reversing course, the trail continues across the access road to Dune Acres, a private residential area, to skirt the north edge of the bog proper. Poison sumac and other plants, shrubs and small trees choke the boundary, creating a foreboding barrier. The trail skirts the edge of a series of forested dunes dominated by red maple and yellow birch and extending north to the lakeshore.

Through most of the 1.7-mile trek to the lake, the stable walking surface of compacted sand and flat trail permit enough pace to keep the insects at bay. After passing between a marsh and pond, I climb increasingly higher dunes on looser sand. Scaling the northernmost dune on this late summer afternoon, I take in a commanding view of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline near the trail’s summit more than 150 feet above the water.

Returning to the trailhead, I reflect on this latest among numerous visits. Indiana Dunes National Park illustrates a universal theme through our park system, change. Mt. Baldy, the park’s highest dune and rogue blowout, has moved south more than 450 feet over the past 80 years. Stands of forest and shacks in use 50 years ago lie buried under the massive dune. As northerly winds redeposit loose sand, storm surges wash away beachfront each year in a continuation of the lakeshore’s evolution. Lake Michigan has swallowed whole developments. The lakefront of a century ago is under water. Wind and wave reshape the landscape in a process thousands of years old. The only constant here is change.

Indiana Dunes highlights another universal park theme. No matter ardent effort, fascinating discoveries abound. Amid the human stories, diverse architecture and decades of struggle between environmental protection and industrial might, a giant among these elusive dunes hitchhikes over what used to be its parking lot as if to leave the risk behind. Pounding surf passes over vanished lakefront development, washing away more beach as the seasons pass. From sand to swamp, the full extent of Indiana Dunes National Park’s treasures remain forever elusive.